Media Advisory – Disability Advocates Decry Cuts

Media Advisory / Request for Onsite Coverage:

WEDNESDAY, March 22 – 11am (PST)

Disability Advocates Decry Cuts
Call on Congress to Preserve Gains for Disabled Americans!

Media Contact: David Perry & Associates, Inc. / (415) 676-7007/ news@davidperry.com

WHEN: Wednesday, March 22: 11am

WHERE: The Independent Living Resource Center SF
825 Howard Street, San Francisco

WHAT: Disability advocates and allies from around the Bay Area will rally at 825 Howard Street in San Francisco in order to press upon Congress the importance of preserving access to community life for thousands of Bay Area residents. Advocates will focus on preserving Community First Choice Option (CFCO), an optional Federal funding incentive that provides additional funding for community-based services for all people with disabilities, as well as other vital medical care and other long term services and supports needed by people with disabilities.

Congressional Republicans are moving legislation that eliminates CFCO by 2020 as part of a strategy to introduce block grants and cut Medicaid. Members of the Disability Community will express to Representative Pelosi, Senator Feinstein and Senator Harris their concerns that the GOP is using CFCO and block grants to play partisan politics without consideration for the many people with disabilities whose lives are hanging in the balance.

The concern is that eliminating CFCO restores the Medicaid bias toward institutionalization that the Disability Community has long fought to reverse. The right to live in the community was first recognized in Federal law in the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead v. LC case. The years since have seen the growth of centers for independent living as Disability Rights organizations have made community integration one of their primary concerns.