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Bush's New Freedom Equals a
"little freedom" for Americans with
Disabilities on Medicare
Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Terry
McAuliffe today called President
Bush's recently-issued "homebound"
Medicare policy changes
misguided, inadequate and simply rhetorical.
"President Bush used the backdrop of the 12th anniversary of
the most important civil rights
legislation for people with
disabilities, the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA), to again put out false promises to
people with disabilities,"
McAuliffe said.
Last Friday, President Bush said that Medicare home health
beneficiaries should be given a
"little freedom" in order to
"occasionally take part in their
communities without fear of losing their benefits." Currently
the home
health homebound rule in Medicare is being used to incarcerate
thousands of people with permanent
disabilities and serious health
conditions in their home each day in order to receive
the home health care they need to
sustain their lives.
When Medicare was enacted thirty years ago, the homebound rule
made perfect
sense for determining who
needed the benefit. But in today's
technologically advanced world, the
homebound rule is unfair, intrusive
and overly proscriptive for people
with the most significant
disabilities, similar to the President's recently
released instructions. In
fact, the new program instruction to home health
agencies and Medicare carriers is
even more restrictive than the already overly
restrictive homebound definition. It
cites specific examples of how
beneficiaries can participate in their communities, but
these examples do more harm than
good. A beneficiary should be able
to leave home to attend college, go
to the movies, or go out to dinner, yet none of
these activities
are on the new Medicare list. These exclusions
obviously imply that they are not
allowed. For
people like David Jayne, the founder of the National
Coalition to Amend
the Medicare Homebound Restriction,
a man with advanced ALS, or people who
have late stage MS and severe
spinal cord injuries who must
receive home health services for the
rest of their lives, the rule is damaging to their quality of
life. Nationally,
roughly forty-six thousand beneficiaries are estimated
to need skilled home health care for
a year or more due to their
disability or chronic illness.
"President Bush's so-called New Program Instruction is no
different than his
'New Freedom Initiative.' It is full
of rhetorical promises and false
claims," McAuliffe continued. "The
Bush administration's clarification of Medicare policy is even
more restrictive than the existing
restrictive homebound definition."
"Once again, I call on the President---and Congress---to
deliver 'Real Freedoms' to people
with disabilities, not Bush's
version of 'New Freedoms.'"
www.democrats.org
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