ADAPTers in New York celebrated last week when a five year advocacy campaign took a huge "step" forward! Late in the evening on Tuesday, October 19th, ADAPT received a call from the Governor's office to report that Governor George Pataki had signed our Nursing Facility Transition and Diversion Medicaid Waiver bill into law! This was right down to the wire as Pataki signed the bill only a few hours before the deadline, after which it would have been an automatic veto.
This legislation, which we developed with a Conservative Republican State Senator, directs the NYS Department of Health to create a waiver to transition people out of nursing homes, or divert them from being forced in in the first place! Although New York already had a waiver for people with Traumatic Brain Injury and one for people with Developmental Disabilities, there were huge gaos that people with MS, MD, Spinal Cord Injury and many other disabilities were falling through and ending up in nursing homes.
The legislation indicates that the Waiver will have 5,000 slots for the first three years. This is well in-line with ADAPT's goals of transitioning 1% of the nursing home population each year and allow us to divert more than a thousand people as well!
This tremendous victory comes after years of protests, meetings with legislators, meetings with the Dept. of Health, colation work with Independent Living and with Senior Advocacy groups, more protests, letter and phone call campaigns, more meetings... and finally... VICTORY!
There is more yet to be done to get the Waiver implemented, but last week was a huge week for us, and for the 120,000 New Yorkers currently stuck in nursing homes.
FREE OUR PEOPLE!
Chris Hilderbrant
Rochester ADAPT
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