From the Modesto Bee:

Some California healthcare advocates say the state’s budget deal cuts too deeply into safety net programs for poor people and those with disabilities.

Disability advocates estimate that 40,000 seniors and people with disabilities would lose caregivers, and 85,000 would lose domestic services, such as meal preparation, laundry, or transportation to medical appointments. The services are funded by the In-Home Supportive Services program, which provides home services for about 425,00 people with disabilities. Advocates say state-funded home care has proven to be far less expensive than caring for the same people in nursing homes.

Earlier posts here.

From the Redding [CA] Record Searchlight:

Thousands of elderly and disabled Californians stand to lose the state-funded help they need to stay in their homes, thanks to proposed cuts in California’s budget.

Claire “Betty” Berg, of Redding, CA, says the cuts mean she may be forced into a nursing facility — which would cost the state much more than it pays now for the aide worker who supports her at home. She urges people to speak up and advocate for themselves.

See also:

• Javier’s story: Disabled man feels pain of CA budget cuts — BakersfieldNOW.com
• Details of agreement to close California budget deficit — San Jose Mercury News

From the [Salt Lake City] Deseret News:

Forty members of the disability rights advocacy group ADAPT have been blocking the Democratic Party’s national headquarters in Washington, seeking support for the Community Choice Act. Other members of the group have been staging protests in state Democratic Party headquarters around the country.

The measure would allow people with disabilities who are receiving Medicaid benefits the ability to choose between nursing home care and long-term support services in the community.

See also: Obama backs helping hand for long-term care — NPR/Kaiser Health News

Mark Brown, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, says the Illinois legislature hurt some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens when it approved a “bogus stopgap budget deal” that included deep cuts in human services programs. The budget is a “lousy outcome for people who already get short shrift in this state,” he says.

Hurt the most, he says, are people like 35-year-old Tom Morissette, a man with Down syndrome whose day program was forced to close. Now Morissette is stuck at home, watching television or sitting on the porch swing. “It’s truly been a devastating loss,” his sister says.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

A disability watchdog organization has filed suit against Washington state, arguing that hasty budget cuts threaten to push some 900 adults with disabilities into nursing homes.

The suit seeks to delay funding cuts to a nursing care program that allows adults with disabilities to live in a state-run group home and still receive Medicaid-supported health care services.

“The risk of this transition is being entirely borne by individuals, many of whom are frail, many of whom are elderly, all of whom are disabled,” said [Andrea] Brenneke, an attorney for the Washington Long-Term Care Ombudsman. “What we have is a system that appears to have failed entirely in protecting the constitutional rights of these people. … (The state) can’t just cut them off.”

The attorney for the state, Assistant Attorney General Michael Young, responded that the state was not abandoning people and that, in some cases, former providers were helping their clients bridge the gap by donating their time as charity.

Editors of the Baltimore Sun say the closing of the Rosewood Center, an institution for people with disabilities, “came none too soon, given the center’s troubled past.” They say the institution’s closing has improved the lives of its 166 former residents … “at least so far.” An excerpt:

It’s no surprise that not everyone is pleased with what has taken place. Group homes can have their faults, too.

But whatever their shortcomings, they pale in comparison to Rosewood’s dilapidated housing and its unsafe conditions, patient-on-patient violence and substandard medical care. Such circumstances could not be allowed to continue. The days of state-run institutions for the disabled are slowly coming to an end; the shame is that it took so long for that moment to come to Owings Mills.

Earlier posts here.

On the 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court Olmstead decision, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law called for a renewed effort to integrate people with disabilities in their communities. The organization’s report, “Still Waiting — The Unfulfilled Promise of Olmstead,” says federal and state governments could save billions of dollars by moving people with mental disabilities from institutional to community settings.

Among the report’s key points:

• States must end the unnecessary segregation of people with disabilities in institutions, and shift funding to appropriate community-based services;
• States continue to waste scarce resources by placing people with mental illnesses in costly, ineffective institutional settings, often under pressure by profit-making providers; and
• Supreme Court and other judicial nominees must have an understanding of and intention to uphold Olmstead, the ADA, and other civil rights laws.

“On this pivotal anniversary of Olmstead, we must take a hard look at what really needs to be accomplished to adequately serve millions of people with mental illnesses so that they receive the most integrated care possible,” said Robert Bernstein, executive director of the Bazelon Center. The report was released at a Washington press conference.