Oppose Medicaid cuts that will drive people with disabilities from their communities.
The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990. I have a daughter with a disability.
That fact sits with me at every decision, every budget meeting and every conversation about what it means to serve people the way they deserve to be served. It is also why what happened in Washington, D.C. , last month made me angry in a way I rarely allow myself to be in public.
On June 18, the U.S. Department of Justice declared that states have no legal obligation to serve people with disabilities in their communities rather than in institutions, attempting to erase the foundational principle guiding disability rights for nearly three decades.community for 20 years. He shops at his neighborhood grocery store. He goes to Padres games. He has friends.
He has a life full of the ordinary moments you and I take entirely for granted. , issued on June 22, 1999, affirmed that unnecessary institutionalization of people with disabilities is discrimination, establishing the legal obligation for states to provide services in the most integrated setting appropriate to each person’s needs. For 27 years, that mandate protected David’s right to belong. The Department of Justice memo attempts to end that protection.
Under Medicaid, institutional care is mandatory. Home and community-based services are optional. When budgets are cut, states have historically eliminated optional programs first, as noted in this. People who lose community services face an impossible choice: unpaid family caregiving, going without or institutional placement.
For many, there is no fourth option. While the bill exempts many individuals with disabilities from work requirements, it simultaneously restricts the financing tools states use to fund their services and threatens the provider infrastructure their care depends on. The exemption protects eligibility on paper. It does not protect the system that delivers care.
Community-based home care costs a fraction of institutional care. The current nationwide average annual cost of a shared nursing home room is estimated at. For every person who loses community services and ends up in an institution, Medicaid will spend vastly more. The people who designed this policy know that.
If this is not about saving money, what is it about?removes the one legal mechanism that forced states to maintain community infrastructure under budget pressure. As Alison Barkoff, former head of the Administration for Community Living, warned in: “I’m incredibly worried that there are no guardrails if the federal government walks away from Olmstead enforcement.
” The memo itself acknowledges its position is out of step with common understanding of Olmstead in federal courts, admitting its own vulnerability in the document it published. The Lanterman Act protects Californians with developmental disabilities at the state level. But federal Medicaid dollars do not carry the same protection. The threat is not that Olmstead disappears overnight.
The threat is that the federal government stops enforcing it, and that difference is everything to the 5,100 people Home of Guiding Hands serves. Home of Guiding Hands has served San Diegans for more than 55 years, with 27 residential homes and community support programs across San Diego, Imperial Valley and San Gabriel Valley, built by families who refused to accept that an institution was the only answer for their children. The Department of Justice memo is not law.
Members of Congress can still stop this, but only if they hear from you. Call the Capitol switchboard at 224-3121. Tell your representative and both senators you support codifying Olmstead into federal law and oppose Medicaid cuts that will drive people with disabilities from their communities. David shops at his grocery store because of what those families built.
He goes to Padres games because of what those families believed. San Diego helped build this. I am asking San Diego to defend it. Hershey is president and CEO of Home of Guiding Hands, a nonprofit serving more than 5,100 individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities across San Diego, Imperial Valley and San Gabriel Valley.
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