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2-24-05
For Immediate Release:
February 24, 2005
For Information Contact:
Bob Kafka 512/431-4085
Marsha Katz 406/544-9504
(http://www.adapt.org/)
ADAPT Scores Meeting with CMS Director to Discuss Medicaid Reform
Washington, D.C.--- An expected 500 ADAPT activists haven't even arrived
in the nation's capitol, yet they have already secured a meeting to
discuss Medicaid reform with Mark McClellan, the Administrator of the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). McClellan will meet with
ADAPT at their hotel in D.C. on the morning of Sunday, February 27.
ADAPT wants CMS to engage in Medicaid long term care reform that makes
home and community based services a mandatory service, and nursing homes
and institutions optional, the reverse of the current practice. "We are
looking forward to meeting with Administrator McClellan, and we appreciate
his coming to us, as former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala did in 1993," said
Bob Kafka, National ADAPT Organizer. "It is imperative that there be no
cuts or caps in the Medicaid program, because if there are, states will
continue to cut optional programs, and always first on the chopping block
is home and community based personal care services. When those services
are cut, persons with disabilities, old and young, are forced into nursing
homes and other institutions."
In addition to meeting with McClellan, ADAPT will be in D.C. February 26 -
March 2 for the introduction of the 2005 Money Follows the Person
legislation, and to celebrate the early introduction of the Medicaid
Community-based Attendant Services and Supports Act of 2005 (MiCASSA), in
both the Senate and House of Representatives.
Sponsors of the Money Follows the Person (MFP) are Senator Tom Harkin
(D-IA) and Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR). MFP would assure that people
wanting to move from nursing homes, developmental disability institutions,
psychiatric hospitals, and rehab facilities would have the funding from
that setting "move with them" to support them in their own home in the
community. "Texas enacted legislation a few years ago that MFP is modeled
on," added Kafka, "and it has resulted in amazing outcomes. Since our
Texas version of MFP became real, around 2000 persons a year, over a third
of whom had been institutionalized for over two years, have used it to
move out of nursing homes. This has resulted in a savings of at least
20-25% over the nursing home costs, meaning that the same amount of money
can serve more people, more efficiently."
Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) and Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) have again introduced
MiCASSA, H.R. 910, in the House of Representatives late last week. Their
colleagues in the Senate, Sen. Harkin (D-IA) and Senator Arlen Specter
(R-PA) introduced MiCASSA, S. 401, in the Senate on February 16, along
with 10 co-sponsors.
"These are very tough times for America's most vulnerable citizens," said
Bob Liston, Montana State Organizer, "and ADAPT is committed to doing
whatever it takes to prevent Medicaid cuts and caps, thus preventing our
being institutionalized against our wishes and losing our freedom. We
won't go away, and we'll keep after those in power until they listen, and
assure we have the same rights as the rest of America."
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FOR MORE INFORMATION on ADAPT visit our website at
http://www.adapt.org/