ACTION ALERT

Congress is heading home the month of August. Now is the time to visit with your Senator or Congressman and urge them to support Senator Tom Harkin’s Community Choice Act of 2007 S.799 and Representative Danny Davis’s companion bill in the House of Representatives, H.R 1621.

It is critical to remind your elected representatives about the important role the Community Choice Act plays in consumer choice and independence. The Community Choice Act of 2007 gives individuals who are eligible for nursing home services or other institutional care equal access to community-based services and supports, like attendant services across the nation. The Community Choice Act is about individual CHOICE.  It allows an individual to choose to receive their care in the community, rather than in an institutional setting. 

We need to use the August recess to collect more co-sponsors for the Community Choice Act! To see if your representative has signed onto the legislation go to www.thomas.gov and type in the bill numbers. If your Senator or Representative is not on this list, call them directly or through the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 1-202-224-3121 and ask them to sponsor S. 799 & H.R. 1621.

The NCIL web site (www,ncil.org) has a copy of Dr. Mitch LaPlante’s report Estimating the Expense of a Mandatory Home- and Community-Based Personal Assistance Services Benefit Under Medicaid as well as talking points on the Community Choice Act of 2007.

The Senate Finance Committee will be holding a hearing on Long Term Care September 25, 2007. This is an historic day that all of us have earned though years of hard work. We need to show the Committee how much support there is among people with disabilities for this legislation, so we need as many co-sponsors as possible!

Together we can and will make a difference! Thank you for your advocacy efforts!