[WestMALocals] (no subject)

[Martina Robinson]

Dear Fellow Greens,

Below is my floor proposal for the convention.  I need (I believe) 14 
co-sponsors.  I already have two, thanks Maureen and Mike.  If you are 
interested in co-sponsoring this proposal, please email me.  Also if you 
have suggestions, include them.

Sincerely,
Martina
**************************************************************************

Floor Proposal
In support of the Community Choice Act (hereafter referred to as CCA)
Green-Rainbow Party Convention
August 25th, 2007
Submitted by Martina Robinson
Co-sponsors: Mike Heichman and Maureen Doyle

As many of you know, I have been working to pass a National homecare 
legislation formerly called MICASSA the Medicaid Community Attendant 
Services and Supports Act, along with many of my colleagues both disabled 
and not disabled in the disability rights movement around the country.

This year, the bill has been renamed the Community Choice Act in effort to 
illustrate that if you wish to stay in a nursing home and this bill passes, 
you still have the option to do so.  What the bill would eliminate, however, 
is the need for people to move and leave friends, family and support 
structures that are already in place in order to receive independent living 
services such as personal care assistants.  Right now, you have to live in a 
state or area that provides these services in order to get them.

Take me for example:  In 2000, I had to move from Pennsylvania to 
Massachusetts in order to receive an adequate number of personal assistance 
hours and housing subsidy.  If I would have remained in Pennsylvania (which 
I badly wanted to do) with my family, friends and job that I liked very 
much, I would have received no housing assistance and only three hours of 
PCA care a day.  In Massachusetts I receive 16 hours of PCA care per 24 
hours, and have a rental assistance voucher.  Granted my life is not 
perfect, but at least it is survivable.  I don’t feel that it is very 
American (at least in terms of the America I want) to tell someone they have 
to move in order to survive.  But it happens every day to disabled people 
all over our nation with various kinds of disabilities, not just physical, 
but mental, psychological and emotional as well.  People who are perfectly 
capable of having jobs and living independently with supports cannot do this 
merely because of where they are currently located.

According to the Ten Key Values of the Green Party, which we have all agreed 
to, the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts can and should take a stand in 
support of the CCA.  The evolution of the CCA from the original bill that 
only specified support for people with physical impairments was brought 
about by advocates with other disabilities clearly asking the crafters, 
“What about us?”  Of course, in the minds of the people who wrote the bill, 
these people would be served as well.  After it was called to their 
attention that the wording was less than specific, it was altered because 
the writers did not want to give Washington an out.  I think this is a fine 
example of Grassroots Democracy, the first key value.

The second key value of Social Justice and Equal Opportunity is also served 
by the bill.  It is not socially just to have to move away from people you 
care about in order to avoid going into an institution.  You cannot say that 
disabled people have equal opportunity when they are forced into nursing 
homes because they and their families don’t have the resources to privately 
pay for homecare.

This bill also supports the fifth key value of Decentralization because it 
allows disabled people with help from friends and family if necessary to 
decide what services are appropriate for them, and individually design their 
own support structure as they see fit.

We very rarely think of supporting something like the CCA as a means of 
supporting key value number six, Community-based Economics and Economic 
Justice, but it is.  Again, using myself as an example, I receive 111.75 
state paid for hours of support per week, and my PCA’s get $10.84 per hour, 
more than most PCA’s throughout the nation by a dollar or two.  Therefore, 
the total state expenditure for my care is $62,991.24 per year.  Yet if I 
were in an institution, my bill would be $87,500 per year according to 
Kiplinger’s personal finance report of March 2004, and I’m sure the price of 
institution care has gone up since then, though I have no later data.  
According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services, over 8,200 of 
our fellow Massachusetts citizens who live in institutions wish to rejoin 
their communities and live independently.  If every one of these 8,200 
people needed the same level of services that I do, (bearing in mind that 
most people need less services than I,) simply by switching these people who 
have already expressed a desire to live independently into homecare 
services, the state would save $516,528,168.00 per year, every year.  I’m 
sure we can all think of better things to do with our state tax dollars than 
imprisoning disabled people who commit no crime in places they do not want 
to be.

One can also say that allowing disabled people to hire their own workers and 
set their own care hours encourages community-based economics directly.  I, 
for example, employ between 5 and 7 people usually, and for three of them I 
am their only source of income.  If I went away to an institution, what 
exactly are these three people supposed to do?

One usually also doesn’t think of homecare as promoting our seventh key 
value of feminism and gender equity, but one look at the statistics clearly 
illustrates this point.  Most of the unpaid caregivers in our society are 
women:  Mothers, daughters and wives who must forego participating in 
activities they would enjoy and earning in some cases a living because they 
must take care of a disabled person.  Often they are quite happy to do this, 
and I don’t mean to minimize their contribution, but wouldn’t it be nice if 
they had the option for both themselves and the disabled person to hire 
extra help as needed?

Respect for diversity is a major goal of the Green-Rainbow Party, and we 
have struggled with it.  You cannot hope to respect every body without 
allowing every body to have what they need to function.  News flash:  not 
every person who wants to participate in broader society can get dressed or 
go to the bathroom by themselves.  This doesn’t mean they shouldn’t 
participate.

The most important key value supported by the CCA is future focus and 
sustainability.  We cannot afford to force people into nursing homes who 
don’t wish and don’t need to be there at a great expense to ourselves and 
our state.  Massachusetts is always complaining about its’ lack of financial 
resources, which we have seen illustrated in reduction in food stamp 
programs and housing subsidies as well as increased class sizes in schools, 
and on and on.  I think it would be more future-focused to allocate the 516 
million dollars that would be saved through the CCA to funding these 
programs rather than using it to keep disabled people in places that they 
don’t wish to remain.  How much longer can we afford to engage in this 
foolishness?

The current status of the CCA is that it has been referred to the Energy and 
Commerce Committee of both the House and the Senate.  Currently only one of 
our Congressional Delegation, Senator Edward Kennedy, has signed on to 
co-sponsor.  The other eleven members, all of whom are Democrats, are 
noticeably absent from the co-sponsor list.  I think that we, as the 
Green-Rainbow Party, ought to have some fun with this comparison.  If we 
decide to endorse the CCA, we have a tool to display to disabled citizens in 
Massachusetts (who are practically programmed to vote Democratic) who is 
really on their side.

Whether or not this convention endorses the CCA, which I hope it does, I 
encourage each of you to bother those eleven absent delegates, who represent 
you regardless of your Party affiliation to support the Community Choice Act 
(Senate bill 799 and House bill 1621).

Example letter to Senator Kerry and the rest of the Congressional Delegation



Dear Senator Kerry and Representatives Olver, Neal, McGovern, Frank, Meehan, 
Tierney, Markey, Capuano, Lynch and Delahunt,

I am one of your constituents and I write to ask you to support the 
Community Choice Act, Senate bill 799 and House bill 1621.  I was really 
dismayed to discover that the only member of the Massachusetts Congressional 
Delegation to support this bill, which would enable 8,200 disabled 
Massachusetts citizens to rejoin their communities rather than living in 
institutions, is Senator Kennedy.

I was further alarmed to discover that Massachusetts spends 60.6% of state 
funded long-term care funding on institutions rather than encouraging people 
to receive services at home.  Studies have shown that people with 
disabilities function better in a familiar setting.  Additionally, 
Massachusetts would save approximately $516 million dollars each year if 
they redirected funds to homecare in order to serve the 8,200 people who 
have expressed desire to return to their communities, according to the 
Department of Medicare and Medicaid Services.

As Massachusetts is direly in debt due to the actions of the Romney/Healy 
administration, we can scarcely afford to waste $516 million dollars every 
year to keep citizens in institutions in which they do not wish to remain.  
The Community Choice Act would eliminate this waste.

Thank you for your consideration.  Please review this matter and contact 
[insert your name and phone numbers and addresses here].

Sincerely,