Writing in the Albany Times Union, Michael Volkman says the Obama administration has quietly withdrawn its support of the Community Choice Act, which both Obama and Vice President Biden had co-sponsored as senators. Obama had pledged support for the measure on the campaign trail.

The bill would change the Medicaid statute to remove its bias toward institutional care. Such a change, Volkman says, would reverse “an injustice within Medicaid that ruins people’s lives and wastes your money.”

Now the White House has changed the disabilities issues page on its Web site. Gone is mention of the President’s intention to enforce the Community Choice Act. [See original text here.] The new paragraph merely states that, “the President believes that more can be done to encourage states to shift more of their services away from institutions and into the community, which is both cost effective and humane.”

Encouraging states to take the lead doesn’t mean they will. If they wanted to, they could have done it years ago.

Is this really how the President feels about this issue?

Did he just give us lip service during the campaign?

Earlier posts here.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 9:03 am and is filed under Community Choice Act, community services, institutionalization, Medicaid/Medicare, NOT2BEMISSED, Obama administration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.