Portlight - Disaster Relief for People with Disabilities

Today at Pacific Standard, I have an interview with Paul Timmons, co-founder of Portlight Strategies. They provide inclusive disaster response to make sure that emergency responders respect the civil rights of disabled folks, they repatriate people with their mobility devices, and they coordinate relief.

I've been watching on social media as Portlight has been helping to coordinate specific rescues and reached out to Paul to get his take on the issues. Here's the big takeaway:

What do readers need to know about people with disabilities and disasters?

The most important message is for the emergency responders, the emergency management people: There is no disaster loophole when it comes to ensuring the civil rights of people with disabilities. That message drives everything else that goes on in this space.

Donate to Portlight here. 

What Happens When You Cut Medicaid? - Texas

New from AP today on the time Texas cut 350 million from Medicaid:

Some Texas children with special needs like Addison have lost critical services since the state implemented $350 million in Medicaid cuts to speech, occupational and physical therapy in December. In Texas, reimbursement offered to providers fell up to 50 percent for certain therapy procedures, said Rachel Hammon, president of Texas Association of Homecare and Hospice. Clinics closed and therapists quit.

The Texas cuts are separate from Republican proposals now before Congress, which academics say could cut federal Medicaid spending as part of a law to replace the Affordable Care Act. But the fallout could eventually be similar if some form of what’s been approved in the U.S. House, and is under consideration in the Senate, becomes law, said Elizabeth Burak, the senior program director of Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families

The Texas Legislature voted in 2015 to cut the state’s Medicaid reimbursement for pediatric acute therapy services, which effectively capped how much providers can be paid. Proponents of the cuts argued that Texas’ previous reimbursement rates were too high, sometimes even encouraging fraud.

In related news, my piece on the history of Republican attacks on Medicaid was picked up by the Dallas Morning News. My inbox has been lived.

Restraint and Death of Disabled Civilians in Texas

The New Statesman reports on deaths in restraint or otherwise in custody of mentally ill civilians in Texas. There's a new bill pending, the Sandra Bland Act. The paper reports on the bill, but also investigated deaths. Excerpts:

Klessig is one of at least 33 people with histories of mental illness who died after being restrained by police in Texas over the past decade, according to a first-of-its-kind investigation by the American-Statesman of in-custody deaths. Six of those people wielded weapons; the rest were unarmed, records with the Texas Attorney General indicate.

And

Some of the deaths in police custody also raise serious questions about the way police deal with people struggling with mental illness. In several instances, police appear to have acted contrary to what experts advise — a slower, less confrontational approach to mentally ill people that can prevent violent encounters and death.

And

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, the Houston Democrat who filed the Sandra Bland Act — named for a mentally ill Illinois woman pulled over in Waller County for a minor infraction and later found dead in her jail cell from an apparent suicide — said the additional training would help officers distinguish between “a person who is in crisis and one who is being aggressive … and resolve the situation in a peaceful manner.”

My take: Such bills will help, but relying on officers to distinguish between disabled and non-disabled civilians will leave many vulnerable. We need core, default, changes.

Here's the project webpage. I'll be following it!

Disability under a GOP Majority: The Case of Texas

Last week I ran a piece on life for PWDs under the GOP majority in Kansas, where the waiting lists are endless (and that's not even counting the people who have given up and aren't even on the lists!). 

Let's talk Texas:

More than a year after lawmakers originally ordered it, Texas announced Monday it will enact significant cuts to the money that it pays therapists who treat vulnerable children with disabilities in two weeks.
Medicaid reimbursement rates are used to pay for pediatric therapy services provided to disabled babies and toddlers. Carrie Williams, spokeswoman for the state's Health and Human Services Commission, said that Texas will apply cuts on Medicaid rates on Dec. 15 in attempt to achieve savings directed by the Texas Legislature in 2015.
"The most important job we have is making sure kids have the services they need and that we are responsible with taxpayer dollars," Williams said in an e-mail. "We will monitor the reduction of rates to ensure access to care is not impacted and that Texans around the state receive the much-needed therapies required to improve their lives."

In magical thinking budget land, you can cut funding but not impact services. Many of these services, in fact, are pretty cheap, applying early intervention to kids who then don't require more expensive services later (I wrote about Rauner's attempt to do these kinds of cuts in Illinois).

Note: The House Speaker vows to reverse cuts. I will believe it when it happens.

And be sure to "read the related coverage."

• Nearly 300 East Texas children with disabilities who are part of the state's Early Childhood Intervention program have no one to provide them with medically necessary therapies after the region’s lone provider closed its doors this week in response to hefty budget cuts ordered by state lawmakers.
• Texas health officials testified in court in 2015 that they had not studied how the budget cuts would affect children’s access to medically necessary therapy treatments.

Magical-thinking budget land where less doesn't mean less because a lawmaker says so, without studying the issue, is dangerous to people with disabilities.

UPDATE: Speaking of Texas, see how they are trashing their special education system.