Michigan Disability Resistance

"What am I going to do?" Joshua wondered. Her 2-year-old daughter, Jasmine Winning, needs heart surgery next year because of a rare disease she's had since birth. The toddler has had two heart operations already because she was born with a malformed heart — a condition resulting from Heterotaxy syndrome, in which internal organs are not where they should be.

Joshua believes it's critical to keep the same doctors for her daughter because they know her unique anatomy. Disrupting the relationship between Jasmine and her medical team would be a "threat to her life," the girl's mother said.

Cigna's decision, along with the recent news that Anthem Blue Cross will pull out of the individual market across a large swath of California, has prompted a key state lawmaker to propose legislation that would help seriously ill patients like Jasmine keep their doctors even if those doctors don't contract with the new health plan.

Anthem cited market instability, tied to uncertainty about federal policy, as a principal reason for pulling out. Cigna also cited instability. State Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina) said the new bill, which he introduced, would protect vulnerable patients from being harmed by it.

"We have to make sure there's stability and some calm [for] the consumer," said Hernandez, chairman of the Senate Health Committee.

For people who buy their own insurance and have to switch plans because their insurer is pulling up stakes, the Hernandez bill would require the new plan to cover treatment by the same physicians, even if they are not in the new insurer's network.

The provision would apply for enrollees under treatment for a chronic, acute or terminal illness, and in cases of pregnancy. The coverage would be contingent on the doctor accepting the payment offered by the new health plan, and the insurer would have to continue covering the services of that provider for up to one year. The coverage could extend beyond a year if the patient were terminally ill.

People who have applied for Social Security Disability Insurance and been turned down twice are having to wait a record number of days to get a hearing in front of a judge and receive a decision.

In the years following the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), international disability rights advocacy was mostly focused on getting on the human rights agenda. It was about getting into the room, becoming visible in places where persons with disabilities had been invisible, and participating in policy development. These were important targets and there was an important focus on uniting people with disabilities across impairments, but less attention was paid to the multiple identities people with disabilities hold.

Today, with the Sustainable Development Goals, leaving no one behind is not only a reference to marginalized communities such as persons with disabilities, but the need for the disability rights community to better include marginalized persons with disabilities.

Women with disabilities are a stark example of the marginalization some sub-groups face within the disability community itself. It’s exciting to hear how many governments are talking about the need for inclusion of women with disabilities. And we also need to keep challenging ourselves.

• How much of the funding reflects this commitment?
• How are we sharing this work and listening to women with disabilities?
• How are we strengthening the movement to include women with disabilities in leadership?
• How are women’s rights donors contributing to this work?

After nearly 20 years of advocacy by ALA, Congress has recently taken significant steps toward permanently assuring free public access to reports by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Taxpayers fund these reports but generally have not been able to read them. ALA welcomes these moves to ensure the public can use these valuable aids to understanding public policy issues.

What are CRS Reports?
CRS is an agency, housed within the Library of Congress, that prepares public policy research for members of Congress. All members of Congress and their staffs have immediate access to these reports on topics ranging from avocado growing to zinc mining.

Political insiders know that these reports, produced by the nonpartisan expert staff at CRS, are excellent sources of information about nearly every conceivable public policy topic. But CRS reports have not been routinely published, and so they have only been accessible to those with a connection on Capitol Hill or through an unofficial third-party source.

ALA’s Calls for Public Access
ALA has long called for public access to CRS reports. ALA’s Council adopted a resolution on the topic in 1998, shortly before Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and then-Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) introduced the firstlegislation to post CRS reports online for public access. We have continued to advocate on the issue over the years, most recently by supporting the latest iteration of that legislation, the Equal Access to Congressional Research Service Reports Act.

What’s New
Both House and Senate appropriators have recently approved language to provide public access to CRS reports. Because appropriations are needed to fund the government, these are considered must-pass bills.

In the Senate, S. 1648 includes the language of the Equal Access to CRS Reports Act. In the House, similar provisions were included in H. Rept. 115-199: the report accompanying H.R. 3162 (which in turn was compiled into H.R. 3219).

What’s Next
Four key steps remain before we and our allies can declare victory in our nearly 20-year effort to provide public access to CRS reports:

1. The House and Senate have to reconcile the (relatively minor) differences between their language on this issue.
2. The provision has to survive any attempts to weaken or remove the language on the floor of the House or Senate when a reconciled bill or Report is considered;
3. Both houses of Congress have to pass an identical bill; and
4. The President has to sign it.

In the last week of July, Kyle Wolfe received a ticket from the Denver Police Department after being hit by an SUV while trying to cross the street in his wheelchair. The incident occurred months after Denver released a new action plan, called Vision Zero, designed to eliminate traffic deaths and reduce injuries caused by the transportation system.

Wolfe was crossing the street in downtown Denver when some items he was carrying fell off his lap. He says that stopping to pick them up delayed his crossing and he wasn’t able to get out of the street before the light turned. He was then hit by the SUV, which left him bruised and damaged his wheelchair.

The Denver PD cited Wolfe for “Disobeying a Traffic Control Device.” The driver of the SUV was not cited. In an email response to questions, the Denver PD claimed that “The investigation revealed that Wolfe was crossing the street outside of a crosswalk in a designated bicycle lane and against the crossing signal.”