CLASS vs. CCA
Published July 20, 2009 @ 04:00PM PT
While the Community Choice Act (CCA) remains ignored, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act has been marked up for inclusion in health care reform. The CLASS Act being marked up isn't in and of itself isn't bad, but the contrast--and perhaps interconnectedness--with the CCA being ignored is problematic.
This blog post contains a press release from ADAPT criticizing the support of the CLASS with no mention to the CCA.
Originally the two acts were supposed to be related. CLASS essentially enables individuals who currently have good employment (middle class and above) to save money out of their pay checks for long term supports later on. CCA essentially ends the institutional bias of medicaid so that when those individuals need the supports--as well as (more importantly to the topic of this blog here) low income or non-working individuals who currently need the supports--will be able to get those supports from the community instead of being forced into a nursing home or institution. This doesn't just make financial and ethical sense, it's literally the law. The comments are at least as interesting as the original post. Especially worth reading is the one about benefits bias from Mark Romoser (who also always has an interesting comment worth reading here).
This blog post contains a brief summary of current events with the CLASS act. What's interesting about this post isn't the post itself as much as the second comment about the costs of long term care--and the concept that what people would pay out for the CLASS Act might not actually cover their true long term care costs.
Yet more pieces of the bigger picture.
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Dora is committed to improving quality of life for individuals on the autistic spectrum--including herself! She is Co-director of the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education and a member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network's Board of Directors.
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Why, thanks for the shoutout!
I've been working closely with an activist from ADAPT, the radical disability rights group, on this. She says that CLASS doesn't get it done for people with disabilities, because most of us aren't working to begin with and so won't be paying into the program.
And CCA has more than 100 cosponsors in the House. CLASS has fewer than two dozen. So why put CLASS in the reform package and not CCA? We might have to ask the lobbyists for the nursing home industry...
Posted by Mark Romoser on 07/20/2009 @ 06:13PM PT
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