NAMI Executive Director Michael Fitzpatrick joined a group of 12 representatives from the disability community last week for a historic meeting with President Barack Obama.
The group met prior to an East Room ceremony in honor of the 19th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The landmark law prohibits discrimination against employees with mental or physical disabilities in employment, education, housing, public transportation and other areas.
President Obama announced the Administration’s commitment to sign and seek Senate ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which encourages countries world-wide to protect people with disabilities from discrimination.
Before the President’s arrival, the disability community representatives spoke with Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis about the group’s priorities for civil rights enforcement at both departments.
Among other things, priorities include:
reducing the waiting time for ADA complaints to be resolved,
protecting children from the use of seclusion and restraints and
applying a government-wide strategy to improve the representation of people with significant disabilities among federal employees.
President Obama acknowledged that employment, education, technology, health care and civil rights policy issues were all relevant during this first listening session.
Disability group representatives shared their personal discrimination stories with the President to underscore the importance of viewing disability issues in terms of civil and human rights. Health care reform also was a major focus of the discussion and the group highlighted the need to end institutional bias in Medicaid.
Going forward, the group plans to meet with members of the Administration’s health reform team to share their input, as they work to make more progress in achieving the goals of Americans with Disabilities Act before its 20th anniversary next year.
"NAMI was proud to be a part of this groundbreaking meeting," said NAMI Executive Director Michael Fitzpatrick. "We look forward to working with the Administration and other disability community groups to meet the goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act."
Here are the tallking points on NAMI's agenda for Healthcare Reform:
1) Ensure that mental illness treatment is included as part of any required basic benefit package;
2) Ensure that mental heatlh is covered just like any other medical or surgival benefit
3) Address medical co-morbidities experienced by peopel with serious mental illness through expanded access to primary care and early intervention services;
4) Provide adequate financing in order to gurantee that health reform lives up to its promise of delivering comprehensive and affordable coverage;
5) Provide income-based standards for premiums, co-payments, deductibles and out-of-pocket expxenses;
6) Provide premium subsidies on a sliding scale up to 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level;
7) Limits on cost sharing so health coverage is affordable for all American families;
8) Provide an expansion of Medicaid that strengthens and maintains Medicaid's role as the base of coverage for current mandatory beneficiaries;
9) Provide improvements to portability, enrollment, and renewal to maximize coverage;
10) Provde minimal red tape;
11) Provide stability for all Americans;
12) Regulatations that prevent insurance companies from discriminating based on mental health status, gender and occupation;
13) Guarantees that quality, affordable health care coverage is abailable across the country;
14) Guarantee that individuals and famiies have options in selecting health plans;
15) Provide financial support and incentives for primary community-based care (especially for children and adults living with serious mental illness);
16) Provide adequate cost savings to improve long-range fiscal stability;
17) Provide a strong employer responsibility requirement with penalties for those employers who do not offer coverage based on total payroll rather than penalties tied only to employees who receive income subsidies; and
18) Provide sufficient assistance for states so that federal health reform does not
impose an unnecessary burden on already strained state budgets, and that does not punish states that have chosen to expand Medicaid and SCHIP coverage above federal requirements.
NAMI supports Healthcare Reform. Visit NAMI at
www.nami.org JOIN NAMI Metropolitan Baltimore at
www.namimetropolitanbaltimore.org Join Healthcare For America Now at
www.healthcareforamericanow.org Visit Carl Bell at
www.thecouncil-online.org; www.giftfromwithin.org Visit Black Psychiatrists of America at
www.blackpsychiatristsofamerica.com Visit Nat'l Assoc. of Black Social Workers at
www.nabsw.org Visit Nat'l Org. of People of Color Against Suicide at
www.nopcas.com Visit American Association of Pastoral Counselors at
www.aapc.org Agnes B. Levine is the Author of: "Cooling Well Water: A Collection of Work By An African-American Bipolar Woman" ISBN 13 978-0-9754612-0-4 Available NOW at
www.amazon.com
Posted By: agnes levine
Sunday, August 23rd 2009 at 6:14PM
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