by Heiwa Salovitz, ADAPT
ADAPT is a national grass-roots community that organizes disability rights activists to engage in nonviolent direct action, including civil disobedience, to assure the civil and human rights of people with disabilities to live in freedom. For information about an ADAPT chapter in New Haven, call (203) 887-0248 or e-mail cpmuslim@gmail.com.
One of ADAPT’s campaigns is the Community Choice Act (CCA). For a tax of six dollars a year, the CCA would help seniors to stay in their own homes instead of nursing facilities. People with disabilities would have funding available to help them live independently.
Community Choice Act: S 683 and HR 1670
Even with the recent passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590), federal law still requires that states provide nursing facility care in their Medicaid programs without a similar requirement for home and community-based services. The Community Choice Act (CCA) levels the playing field and gives Americans a real choice in long term care by reforming Title XIX of the Social Security Act (Medicaid) and ending the institutional bias.
The Community Choice Act allows individuals eligible for services in a Nursing Facility, Intermediate Care Facility for the Mentally Retarded (ICF-MR), or Institutions for
Mental Disease (IMD) the opportunity to choose instead a new alternative, “Community-based Attendant Services and Supports.” Services can be provided at home, in school, at work and in the community. Assistance is available for a broad range for needs, such as bathing, dressing, meal preparation, money management and certain health related tasks.
In addition, by providing an enhanced match and grants for the transition to “Real Choice” when the benefit becomes permanent, the Community Choice Act offers states financial assistance to reform their long term service and support system to provide services in the most integrated setting
What would this program cost?
On average, a middle class taxpayer would only pay an additional $2.29-$6.07 in taxes annually for CCA, depending on CCA cost. If the cost was adjusted for inflation for 2010, the middle class taxpayer would pay an average of $2.40-$6.35 annually.
What would this program cost? $6.07 a year.
For more information about the CCA and to learn more about ADAPT, call (203) 887-0248, e-mail cpmuslim@gmail.com or visit the website www.adapt.org
