CHICAGO, IL — I am Curtis Harris. I am from Chicago. I am a black person who works with the Disability Committee of the Illinois Single Payer Coalition. I am active with other disability groups like the Illinois Council on Developmental Disabilities and the Racial Justice Organization of Access Living.
I have faced discrimination due to my disability in employment, housing, and healthcare. Many people with disabilities face discrimination due to disability, race, gender and sexual orientation. People with disability come in many varieties including diverse physical, mental, cognitive and sensory categories.
People with disabilities have a very high rate of unemployment, higher than most other groups. Many people with disabilities try to survive on SSI which is $841 a month. This is when the poverty level for an individual is pegged at $1,133 a month. Thus millions of people with disabilities are forced into abject poverty!
Housing is a huge problem for people with disabilities. Their income is often below the lowest apartment rental rates forcing them into substandard housing, crowding together, homelessness or forced into abysmal institutional settings. A few lucky ones may live in subsidized housing but may have waited 10 years to get in. Many rental agencies do not want people with disabilities.
Being institutionalized against one’s wishes is very common. About 3,000,000 people live in these institutions, often paid for by Medicaid. A large number of residents would prefer to live in the community but cannot get the support to do so. Institutional living has always been a smelly dangerous experience, but during the pandemic was the most dangerous place of all.
As disability health advocates we support a universal, high quality, equitable system of health care called Medicare for All. This universal system operates successfully in dozens of countries and gets better results than the US for profit system. In the US 45,000 die each year due to lack of insurance. People with disabilities rely on Medicaid but face barriers to care like providers who refuse to take it, we are given poor quality care due to low reimbursement rates and face stigma that comes with a program for the poor. Medicaid that drops, when you become employed has been a big barrier to employment.
In our advocacy, we have had some success. We not only want people with disabilities to get the same healthcare as everyone else but also to have a national program of long-term care for all who need assistance included in Medicare for All.
The current bills in the House and the Senate have added long term care to their Medicare for All bills. This is due to our advocacy! However, we want to make sure that access to home and community services are top priority over institutional care. Building a caring society that addresses the needs of children, seniors, people with disabilities, and all others who struggle needs to be our goal.
Millions of people in the US, including many people with disabilities, would be lifted out of poverty by the passage of Medicare for All. We say Everybody IN, Nobody Out! Health care for All NOW!
