Disabled-rights group calls for reform

Utah advocates for disabled people say they are not going to let Washington tell them how to live anymore.

Barbara Toomer, secretary of disability-rights group ADAPT/Utah, has met with Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, in person three times. Each time, he said he would co-sponsor the Community Choice Act, which gives disabled persons on Medicaid a choice between a nursing home, what the government will currently pay for, and long-term support-service care, Toomer said.

"But then he didn't. He said the act needed more study," she said.

President Barack Obama, who ADAPT/Utah members said they voted for because he claimed to support the act, seems to have betrayed them, as well, said member Lopeti Penima'ani. With Toomer and others, he met with Obama's Health and Human Services representatives to discuss the act, only to be told the president was not going to include long-term services in his health-care reform, Penima'ani said.

But now that Washington is in the process of overhauling the health-care system, ADAPT is not going to pass up a chance to get the act passed as part of the deal, Toomer said.

Eleven members and supporters of ADAPT/Utah walked and wheeled into the Utah Democratic headquarters office in downtown Salt Lake City and refused to leave until the Utah party's executive director, Todd Taylor , issued a letter to the Democratic National Committee, asking its higher-ups to back the Community Choice Act.

He did so, happily.

But Taylor's support may be for naught. Thirteen ADAPT chapters around the country went to their Democratic headquarters and did the same, with mixed results. Three other state headquarters faxed their own letters to Washington. Illinois is budging, but the other states haven't been responsive so far. Neither has the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington, D.C,, where about 40 ADAPT members have been hunkered down since Tuesday morning, blocking elevators, restrooms and hallways to effectively shut down work at the office until their demands are met.

"Superman Christopher Reeve had plenty of money, so he had service care," Toomer said. "Why can't the poorest of the poor have it, too?"

It's expensive. The cost analysis in 1997, when the act was first proposed, determined it would cost $10 billion to $20 billion a year.

The price tag's appeal dwindled as the rising cost of health care eventually outpaced education as the United State's biggest expenditure, and in a recession, Taylor recognized the act's cost might sound negative.