From the New York Times, a feature on 20-year-old Sam Stabiner, who lives among elderly people in a Manhattan nursing home. His parents would like him to live among people his own age, but could not find a place for young adults that could provide appropriate care for Sam’s complex medical needs.

As medical advances have allowed patients who might have died as children to survive into adulthood, the patients are falling into a void in a health care system that has yet to develop institutions for the young and “medically fragile.”

… about 8,000 people under age 30 are among roughly 1.4 million nursing home residents, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“This is a problem that has gone largely unrecognized and is only going to grow,” said Dr. Edwin F. Simpser, the chief medical officer at St. Mary’s Healthcare System for Children, the largest provider of intensive rehabilitation and specialized care for severely ill and disabled children in New York.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Harlan Hahn, a longtime USC professor of political science and champion of disability rights who successfully sued the university to improve access for disabled people campuswide, died April 23 at his Santa Monica home. He was 68.

The cause was a heart attack, said his daughter, Emily.

Hahn was already in the vanguard of the disability rights movement when he joined the USC faculty to teach political science in 1972. He pushed for the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibited discrimination against the disabled, and the more sweeping Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.

Hahn, who had polio as a child, brought a lawsuit against USC in 1998 to remove physical barriers that limited the mobility of disabled individuals. The suit was settled in 2001 when the university agreed to embark upon a major barrier removal effort.

He also wrote or co-wrote a dozen books, and filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the 1983 case of Elizabeth Bouvia, a woman who was paralyzed and petitioned the court to let her starve to death. Hahn argued that disabled people needed better support, not help in dying.

“Ultimately, a disability is not an organic deficiency,” Hahn wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 1983, “it is the product of a disabling environment. . . . To deprive any member of the disabled population of the mental and emotional strength that he or she can contribute to others would be an unforgivable act.”

See also the press release from USC: In Memoriam: Harlan Hahn, 68; The USC College political scientist was a major force in the disability rights movement

From the Wall Street Journal:

Members of Congress are expressing concern and scheduling hearings about a Medicare plan to use competitive bidding for products such as wheelchairs and walkers, in a sign that lobbying by medical-equipment companies is gaining traction.

Currently, companies receive a government-set fee to distribute such equipment for patients’ home use. Under the competitive system, companies bid on how low a fee they would be willing to accept. Medicare then limits distribution rights for a particular geographic area to several low bidders.

… Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services say competition could ultimately save $1 billion a year … Critics in Congress and elsewhere say service for the elderly will suffer if the bidding system drives some operators out of business. “We are very concerned about a decrease in quality and access and choice of provider,” says Peter W. Thomas of the Consortium for Citizens With Disabilities.

Further reporting on Washington protests

From Roll Call (registration required):

Hundreds of protesters from the disability advocacy group ADAPT, many in wheelchairs, cut off access to the office of GOP presidential candidate John McCain and the Republican National Committee headquarters for most of the afternoon on Tuesday. At least 21 arrests were made.

ADAPT national coordinator Mike Oxford, who took part in the protest outside the RNC, said the group came to Capitol Hill to urge McCain to support the Community Choice Act, sponsored by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.).

… The protest is one in a series ADAPT has sponsored over the years in support of legislation that would shift federal money to community-based disability assistance and away from nursing homes and other institutions. The group held a similar protest at the Department of Health and Human Services on Monday.

Medicaid currently pays for long-term care in nursing homes and other institutions but does not pay for the same services provided at an individual’s home. (more…)

Associated Press story on Fox News:

At least 20 disabled activists, most of them in wheelchairs, were arrested outside Sen. John McCain’s offices Tuesday after being refused a meeting with the GOP presidential nominee-to-be over a bill to expand Medicaid coverage to more people who want in-home care.

“If he should be president, it would be ironic that he comes from a party that talks a lot about family values,” said Bob Kafka, national organizer for ADAPT, a group advocating for passage of the bill. Without the legislation, many disabled and elderly people don’t have the choice to apply coverage to anything other than institutional care, he said.

“Families are devastated because they don’t have a choice to keep people at home,” Kafka said.

Earlier, from the Los Angeles Times: John McCain gets tax-free disability pension

From the Palm Beach Post:

Former Riviera Beach city councilman Allen Fox is on a crusade to make businesses accessible, filing lawsuits challenging barriers that make it difficult or impossible for him to navigate their premises in his wheelchair. He’s filed 139 lawsuits personally, with the help of lawyer Samuel Aurilio. Eight lawsuits with nearly identical claims were filed on one day last month alone.

Critics say the passage of the ADA has created a cottage industry for unscrupulous lawyers, who can cash in because the law requires the losing side to pay attorney fees. Fox’s lawsuits rarely go to trial because business owners generally agree to renovate and pay Aurilio’s fees. “It’s a racket,” said an attorney who has represented business owners against the pair.

Another attorney who represents people with disabilities blames Congress for crafting a measure that has no enforcement mechanism and no penalty for violating it — an anomaly among civil rights laws.

But that’s not to say it’s easy

The [Toronto] Globe and Mail offers an extended feature on travel for people with disabilities, including tips and websites with information for prospective travelers.

Quebec’s Kéroul, a non-profit organization dedicated to accessible tourism, says people with disabilities are just as likely to travel as the rest of the population, with more than half of the 4.2 million in Canada taking at least one overnight trip a year.

“It’s a normal thing to do for everybody. People with disabilities are the same as everybody else in the sense that it is important for them to experience what this life and this world have to offer, and travel is a big part of that,” says Ray Cohen, publisher and editor-in-chief of Abilities Magazine.

But although the “world is in transition,” he says, the visually impaired or physically disabled are still encountering problems everywhere from buses to train station washrooms to airplanes. “These are issues that people with disabilities cannot take for granted because it means the difference of being able to go someplace or not.”