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So, you've seen disability advocates getting worked up about the initial Biden plan not including us. That's because of the "long-term care" part mentioned as something to be included in the second package. #CripTheVote https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1349880090721722373
People with disabilities rely on health care stuff that isn't covered by private insurance that you get from your employer or Medicare. These services are called long-term care or long-term services and supports or home and community-based services.
When you saw folks with disabilities protesting ACA repeal, that was because these services were directly under that. And since the beginning of the pandemic, Congress has done _nothing_ to support these services.
They're mostly funded by Medicaid, so the Medicaid funding bump in the first piece of COVID relief legislation was something. But that money goes to the entire Medicaid program, not specifically to the services that people with disabilities need.
And those services have been taking a major hit for the past year. The cost of additional PPE, the front-line disablity service workers infected with COVID, the complete change in service delivery for any type ofservice delivered to multiple people because that's dangerous now.
We have been left out of every single relief bill and it was not reassuring to see us left out yet again from a relief bill.
But if this is something Biden wants to focus on as part of recovery, I have a couple of thoughts. A recovery bill needs to go big. It needs to fix structural problems like the institutional bias in Medicaid and absurdly low wages for frontline disability service providers.
It's not enough to just give Medicaid another funding boost. We need disablity-specific funding and we need it as soon as fucking possible.
Also, an additional point. We and older folx have been dying side by side in nursing homes this whole goddamn time. The fact that Medicaid has an institutional bias is why we are dying in nursing homes. Because we are stuck on waiting lists for services in our own homes.
The only way to prevent that is to eliminate institutional bias in Medicaid. Which is something that Republicans and Democrats have supported in bits and pieces for decades. No more bits and pieces. Eliminate institutional bias now. So we don't have to die.