Senator discusses legislation, challenges for people with disabilities

Americans with disabilities still face employment and health care problems despite past… Americans with disabilities still face employment and health care problems despite past legislation, a senator told Pitt students yesterday at the Barco Law Building.

Senator Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, spoke at Pitt’s law school yesterday to talk about disability rights as part of the Thornburgh Family Lecture Series in Disability Law and Policy.

Harkin wrote and sponsored the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. The act aimed to end discrimination and provide support for Americans with disabilities. He said while the bill had its triumphs, many people with disabilities still face difficulties.

He recalled challenges leading up to the passage of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008. This version clarified the law to prevent interpretations that stripped some disabled people of support while stiffening employer regulation so that more people with disabilities could find work.

Harkin said there is a 60 percent employment rate among people with disabilities, often because employers lack reasonable accommodations for or simply do not want to hire them.

“As many employers will tell you, disabled people are often their best employees,” he said. “They just need an opportunity.”

He then focused on the current health care debate, explaining that the ADA currently gives people the right to receive care at home rather than at a nursing home. However, Medicaid does not pay for this, he said.

States recognize the cost effectiveness of home care and fund it, but they often limit who receives these services, Harkin said.

He said the a current health care proposal gives states the option of home care instead of care at a nursing home. In the plan, states are given incentive to choose home care through a six percent increase in the Federal Medical Assistance Percentages program. In this program, the federal government matches a state’s medical spending so that the state saves money.

Annual and lifetime caps on insurance would be abolished, which is significant because people with chronic or severe disabilities often push against the cap and are in danger of losing their insurance, Harkin said.

Audience member Georgetta Blackburn, who was from a local medical supply company, said there is a loophole in the proposed health care bill that would not allow patients to buy the kind of wheelchair they would want.

“We don’t want to let the law go back 20 years,” she said.

Many Pitt law students attended the event and said they understood the importance of the legislation, though they ADA might not effect them directly.

“It’s just the right thing,” law student Tyler Dischinger said.

Uzoma Ogbonna, another law student, agreed.

“It’s important to me because I believe in equality,” she said.

At the end of the speech, Harkin taught the audience the sign language symbols for the word “American”: one’s hands are clasped together, making a circle around his or her chest.

“In a circle, there are no breaks,” he said. “No one is left out.”