Why We Must End All the Waiting

Ethan Ellis’ latest blog post, “End Waiting Lists: Change We Can Believe In,” hits the nail on the head. His post focuses on the long and lengthy waiting lists that an estimated 300 to 500 thousand or more people with significant disabilities are either on official waiting lists for or go uncounted but plainly needs Medicaid community living services. However, Ellis’ piece also helps illustrate a far deeper endemic crisis: Waiting is a constant in too many Americans with disabilities’ lives. Too many of our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, too many of our families and community living workers are putting their lives on hold indefinitely. Endlessly:

Waiting for their freedom and to get out of a nursing home, an ICFMR, a mental health facility, a jail, a prison or some other toxic human waste bin and for the needed supports to succeed at doing so.

Waiting for community living supports to keep them free from such institutions as well as free from hunger or lying in their waste in their own homes and communities.

Waiting for two and half years (29 months) or more for Medicare coverage they should instead get before having to leave a job due to disability and go on SSDI.

Waiting for employer sponsored insurance that rarely comes with the low wage jobs where many, if not most, workers significant disabilities, their families and community supports workers are employed.

Waiting to get one more in a steady stream of denial of coverage notices from your insurer due to its favorite hyphenated hatchet, a pre-existing condition.

Waiting to lose your private and/or public coverage as a young adult with a disability and having your entire life, your health, your independence, your future suddenly jeopardized because of it.

Waiting and putting off needed care, splitting pills, enduring pain, skipping meals, not paying the rent and other basics all for the lack of coverage.

Waiting to obtain the most basic of preventive care -- mammograms, Pap smears, prostate and colorectal screenings, even getting x-rays or lying down on an exam table – either because such procedures are not affordable or accessible to them.

Waiting, in short, on a Democratic Congress to do what is right and responsible. Not just for the over the 50 million of us who have disabilities and our 20 million families but for the entire nation. They must stop waiting for the GOP, whose sole aim and that of highly paid insurance executives is to maintain the status quo at any costs. Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration must do what most Americans elected them to do nearly 12 months ago. The time for waiting and putting up with the politics of intimation, innuendo and the Big Stall is over.

The time to enact comprehensive genuine health reform legislation that includes a strong and robust public option, Senator Kennedy’s CLASS Plan, the Medicaid Community First Option and banning discriminatory practices such as pre-existing conditions and life time caps on benefits is now or never.

Reforms like these, if enacted, will not be a cure-all. Nor, will they eliminate in one fell swope the multiple barriers millions of children, adults and older Americans with disabilities face in obtaining decent, affordable health and community living coverage that we need to lead healthy, independent lives. But, taken together, such provisions are vital to first easing and then ending the intolerable waiting for what must become fundamental rights of all Americans, not just of a privilege of the rich and powerful few. Why can’t we wait? Because as Dr. King made clear simple justice in our democracy must never be made to wait.