The Community First Choice Option amendment is now in Senate health reform bill! People with disabilities are cheering New York Senator Charles Schumer for managing to get the Community Choice into the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform bill.
- Community Choice lets people with disabilities stay in their homes and communities instead of going into a nursing home.
- Community Choice is now in the Senate Finance Committee health care reform bill.
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If it stays in the final enacted bill, states can choose to make it far easier for people with disabilities to obtain services in their homes and communities – rather than be forced to go to a nursing home.
Like everyone else, people with disabilities prefer to stay in their own homes and participate in their own communities. They don’t want to go into nursing homes to get the services they need. That’s why we’re grateful that New York Senator Charles Schumer has succeeded in having the Community First Choice Option included in the Senate Finance Committee health care reform bill.
“The elderly and disabled should not have to choose between staying in their home and receiving the care they need,” said Schumer. “I am gratified that the Finance Committee will vote on a bill that now has this provision that will take steps towards providing home care for those in need, and I will continue fighting until no one has to choose between their health and their home.”
The Community First Choice Option bill will enable people with disabilities to have the services and supports they need in their own homes — in those states who adopt it for their Medicaid programs. Services such as help with dressing, bathing, and grocery shopping often enable people with disabilities to be independent and become or remain employed.
States that adopt this option will receive more federal matching funds for the costs of this program than for other Medicaid costs.
Senator Tom Harkin (D–IA) and Congressman Danny Davis (D–IL) have been lead sponsors of the Community First Choice Option (CCA) (S. 683/H.R. 1670). Senator Schumer has long supported it and, as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, he was able to introduce it as an amendment to the health care reform bill.
We call on all people with disabilities – and friends and family throughout the country — to ask your own Senators to support the amendment to include the Community First Choice Option in health care reform – especially if they are members of the Senate Finance Committee.
Click here to take action on this issue.
Now, we need to call on our friends and family across the country to contact their Senators on the Senate Finance Committee and urge them to support health care reform that includes the Community First Choice Option. Have a friend in Kentucky? An aunt in Florida? Have them call their senator TODAY!
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This recent health care bill should never have passed! I don’t kow of anybody in my social circle that wanted this legislation passed. I hope in November this country what the Democrats forced on us (not a single Republican vote) and that we take action to remove these parasites from office!