Action Alert: Tell Your Senators to Vote NO on the House-passed Budget Resolution

via AAPD (5.26.11): 

Action Alert

The Senate may vote on the Budget Resolution tonight.

Please call!

 Dial the Capitol Switchboard 1-888-245-0215 [toll-free] or 202-224-3121 and ask for the office of your Senators. Message to Senators:

• Please vote NO on the House-passed Budget Resolution.

• People with disabilities disproportionately rely on government services to live, learn and work in their communities. These services assist many people with disabilities to live independently in the community avoiding costly institutional care and increasing the opportunities to work and pay taxes.
• This budget proposal would set rigid limits on Medicaid and food stamps/SNAP, resulting in a 35 percent cut for Medicaid by 2022 and an almost 20 percent cut in food stamps. 
• Starting in the second decade, the House budget would turn Medicare into a voucher program, doubling the burden of payment for its beneficiaries. 
• Over 10 years, it would slash $4.3 trillion in needed services, about two-thirds of which help low-income people.

What is at stake?

Medicaid - The proposed plan shifts the cost of Medicaid to low-income consumers, including people with disabilities, and cuts the program by a third over the next 10 years.  The proposed plan converts Medicaid to a block grant which will cap funding regardless of health care cost inflation over time. 

>>>For More on How the Proposed Medicaid Block Grants Will Hurt People with Disabilities

Medicare - The proposed plan eliminates the current Medicare structure and transforms the program into a voucher system.  It shifts the cost of services to the beneficiaries, almost doubling amount that individuals pay out of pocket for their ongoing health care.

>>> For More from the Congressional Budget Office on the effect on Medicare

 Health Reform - The proposed plan repeals and defunds the Affordable Care Act (ACA) including programs that are vital for people with disabilities.  For example, the CLASS Program and and the Community First Choice Option are two ACA provisions targeted at expanding home and community based options for people with disabilities.

>>> For More on the ACA provisions for PWDs that are at risk

 Call toll free: 1-888-245-0215 [toll-free] or 202-224-3121 and ask for your Senator's office.

What Should You Say?

• I am a constituent with a disability or parent/caregiver of a person with a disability.  (Briefly describe your situation, if you like.)
• The House-passed budget plan will take funding from programs that are critical to people with disabilities and will hurt me and/or my family.
• Please vote against the House-passed budget proposal.

Comments

[Darrin Ray]

I appreciate your updates and they are helpful, but could you please stop using the acronym PWDs? I find it somewhat de-humanizing and derogatory. Many people with disability have had to deal with medical bureacracy and a very impersonal and at best apathetic health-care system, where you are no longer a person but a number, a statistic on a page or a "PWD" instead of a person (which I believe is created in the image of God) and of great value and worth intrinsically regardless of our level of ability. The acronym use is fine when used after an appropriate introduction and definition of the term's usage however, "PWDs" is not appropriate terminology. "People" already notes a plural number the "s" is redundant and when added takes the acronym and assigns it as a proper noun (name) and term in its own right instead of an abbreviation of a proper name and description, which is People with Disabilities. I am a person who has many different descriptions: husband, father, son, friend, minister, fisherman, and even "one who is chronically late for dinner", and yes, a person with a disability (PWD) but I am not nor will I ever be a PWD nor my other friends who face difficult physical challenges will ever be "PWDs" to me...their description is that they are my "friends" first.