This sounds very encouraging and we need two things you need to contact our
congressmen to support. I didn't really understand everything because I
there were a few abbreviations I was not familiar with.
Dana
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For Immediate Release:
May 6, 2007
For information contact:
Bob Kafka (512) 431-4085
Marsha Katz (406) 544-9504
http://www.adapt.org
ADAPT Leaves DC with Everything Asked For After Final Day Doing Literature
Drop in Congress
Washington, D.C. --- 535. That's the number of offices visited by
the nearly 500 ADAPT activists from across the country who left
information on the Community Choice Act (CCA) of 2007 with every Senator
and every Representative in Congress on Wednesday, May 2. In addition to
the CCA information, ADAPT presented each Senator and Representative with
a ten minute DVD edited from the over 6 hours of testimony at the March
2006 national hearing in Nashville, Tennessee, on the institutional bias
in America's long-term care systems.
While conducting the Congressional literature drop, ADAPT received
more commitments from legislators to co-sponsor the CCA (S 799, H.R.
1621), and other commitments to push for hearings in both Houses. By the
end of the day, ADAPT had been notified by staff for Sen. Max Baucus
(D-MT), Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. John Dingell
(D-MI), Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, that both
committees would hold hearings on CCA before the end of the year.
"Needless to say, we are very happy that Sen. Baucus and Rep.
Dingell have committed to hearings on the CCA" said Bob Liston, ADAPT
Montana. "Along with the hearings, we have full support of CCA from the
Democratic National Committee, and the Republican National Committee has
committed to contact all its state affiliates to address the removal of
the Medicaid institutional bias in their state platforms."
In addition to the successes related to CCA, ADAPT was able to
secure meetings with both the American Hospital Association (AHA), and HUD
Secretary Alphonso Jackson. ADAPT wants the AHA to endorse the CCA, and
collaborate on a hospital-discharge protocol that would refer people to
community services instead of doctors and hospitals making automatic
nursing home referrals. Jackson, who came to the ADAPT hotel to meet
personally with ADAPT, committed to meet three times a year, and told the
crowd of 400 that, "Fair Housing is a right! We will do everything in our
power to make sure you have affordable, accessible, integrated housing
options in this country."
Jackson carried the ADAPT message to Congress on May 3, where he
testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee about his meeting
with ADAPT. Jackson has additionally committed to recover housing vouchers
lost to people with disabilities through misappropriation and budget cuts,
and to facilitate a meeting between ADAPT and Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA),
Chair of the House Committee on Financial Services, and Maxine Waters
(D-CA), Chair of the Financial Services Committee's Sub-committee on
Housing and Community Opportunity. This Committee and Sub-committee are
responsible for legislation affecting changes to the Section 811
segregated housing program for persons with disabilities.
"Our work this week accomplished even more than we hoped," Said
Bob Kafka, ADAPT National Organizer, "but we still have so far to go. We
are cautiously optimistic and committed to keeping this week's momentum
going, through our next national action in September in Chicago right up
to the 2008 elections, and beyond. Too many older and disabled people have
been virtually imprisoned in horrific conditions in this country's nursing
homes and other institutions....all for the lack of community services and
affordable, accessible, integrated housing. We will push as hard as
needed, for as long as needed until that situation is rectified, and
Americans have real choice in long-term care services and supports."
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FOR MORE INFORMATION on ADAPT visit our website at http://www.adapt.org/
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