SCRN has written many articles about issues in Europe as the disabled were removed from airplanes because the pilot didn’t want them on board to taxi drivers refusing to take people in wheelchairs because it took to long to get them into the car. It is good that governments realize that the disabled should be treated no differently than the able bodied and should not get substandard service or be charged extra because of their injury or medical condition. It will be interesting to see how the advertisement blitz works and whether workers will actually take it to heart that they need to help those that cannot help themselves. It is not clear who will be doing the enforcement of the law, but they better have plenty of officers around to make sure things are working properly. People are creatures of habit and will not do more work or do things that they do not want to unless they are forced to. Secret officers should try to get on mass transit to make sure it is working properly and if not there needs to be stiff fines to be paid. Once a few workers get hit with big fines it will go through the grape vine that they have to follow the law or else. 

The disabled are usually at the bottom of the poor, unable to pay for good medical care or housing. At least there are government programs in the United States to make sure that the disabled can take care of themselves and their families. Without these safety nets, the disabled have no way of working to take care of themselves or to pay for needed medical care or drugs. The government of Haiti will need to think about how they are going to care for people that cannot care for themselves. Just thowing the disabled to the wolves and forgetting about them is not the way to do this. Add the pubic stigma of being disabled and you have a recipe for disaster. With no government help and most companies refusing to hire the disabled and you have a group that is guaranteed to starve to death on an island that they have no way of getting off of. The United Nations has a significant group on the ground in Haiti that is used for peacekeeping but can and should be used to help the disabled. There should never be a group that is so shunned that they are allowed to starve to death with no medical help and no one cares. Especially where these people are disabled because they were the victim of a natural disaster, they did not create their problem, they are just trying to live through it. There must be rehab programs put in place to help the newly disabled to get the most out of their situation and to train them for jobs that they can do. Everyone wants to be useful and to work and take care of themselves and their family.

Unfortunately the disabled are usually the ones that are the first to be laid off and that employers take advantage 9of those workers because they know how important the salary is. There are laws in place to protect the disabled so they will not be discriminated against but there are few agencies that are able to enforce the law. Even if the disabled person can prove that they have been discriminated against they need the money to hire a lawyer to go after the employer. If they do go after the company then they can be fired for other reasons. So most times the disabled just deal with the discrimination and hope that they can hang on to the job until the economy gets better and they can get another job.The government is working on a new law to protect the disabled workers called the "Equality Bill" and Parliament is discussing it. People that have been discriminated against are asked to contact their MP and let them know what happened and what could be done to fix the situation. Until this bill is passed into law the disabled will not have the same protections as the able bodied and will have to put up with unsavory managers that take advantage of their situation.

 Further problems were found in availability of clinics, tests for medical conditions and pills to control long term conditions. The disabled ran a much greater risk of hearing and visual problems as well as hypertension, obesity and a lack of instructions on how to deal with medical conditions. This creates an environment where those with good medical insurance have access to doctors that are trained to help their patients over a wide range of issues where the disabled typically have to deal with newly graduated doctors that do not have the training or experience to work with those with complicated medical issues. Since the medical infrastructure of the United States is on treating a problem rather than prevention, medical care is much more expensive than virtually anywhere else in the world.

Rather than working to make sure people do not get the flu or popular issues like hypertension or smoking, the medical community and insurance companies waits until the patient is severely sick before they get the care they need. This means that more disabled die or end up with additional medical conditions as compared to the able bodied that have corporate based medical insurance. Many pills are not available on Part B Medicare because they are new and expensive, and most companies have virtually non-existent system to help pay for drugs. This is especially true for those with chronic pain, where most pain medication is prohibitively expensive. As the body requires higher and higher doses to get the same pain relief level, stronger medications are required – that are not covered. Even if the medications are covered, the patient is only covered for the first $2700, after that the patent is on their own for the next $2000 before catastrophic care kicks in.

 This all creates an environment where preventative care is non-existent and only very expensive care is available. While this care is great for those that can afford it, for those that are either on Medicare or no plan at all live in excruciating pain or with out of control blood pressure because there is no treatment that the poor can afford. While there may be plans to help the public, the ADA is typically ignored by companies and cities that find it is easier to get sued than it is to build to code. We all need to work together so that the laws are followed and actually help the disabled to live a more normal life.

Most elected officials are lawyers so one would think and hope that they could have some idea what the law of the land is. For those that are not lawyers, they need to get up to speed quickly as these people are making laws that effect all of us. We need to think carefully before creating new laws as they may be in violation of state or national law. The Americans for Disabilities Act is a federal law that requires that all states follow it. This includes city councils as well. Service animals are allows to go virtually anywhere that  a disabled person goes and that is the end of it. The disabled person needs that animal to get around and to help them do their daily tasks like shopping, working, or going to a city council meeting. It is sad that the mayor actually said that he was shocked that people actually thought they had the right to show up to a public meeting that will directly effect them. Maybe the mayor believes that laws and rules should be made in a vacuum without the benefit of hearing from those that live in his city? In our country, all of our voices are important which is why we have the 1st amendment to the constitution and we all have the right to vote for those that make our rules and laws. It is expected that we are listened to and that changes are made based on what the public wants.

The present work on changes to our medical system demands that we let congress know what we want. The President set up town halls meetings to hear what we had to say. Congressmen and senators have been listening to phone calls, faxes, emails, and letters from constituents that care about what happens to health care in this country. No where does it say that if you are disabled, please get lost. We didn’t hear the proclamation that if you have a service animal please do not show up to the town hall meeting. On the contrary, it was expected that the disabled would show up since they are dealing with the health care system know and would be the best people to hear what should be changed. Why are these meetings different than a city council meetings? Our congressmen understand how important it is to listen to what the voters what as they can be voted out of office if they don’t. This city council looked like they wanted to hand down their own edicts without understanding federal law and what the disabled are allowed to do.

The disabled have rights just like everyone else and special laws were passed to make sure everyone understood that. Unfortunately there are those that don’t want to see the disabled and wish they would go away. There were laws called "ugly" laws that were passed to get rid of the disabled so the rest of the population didn’t need to see them. The ADA forced those laws out of existence and made sure that the disabled had access to the same rights as everyone else. They can buy homes wherever they want, can own a car, go to college and have a family. They do not have to ask for permission or get a sign off before they have a child. Additional rights were given so that the disabled could interact with others, which included service dogs. Congress understood that the disabled needed more help and gave the disabled the right to get animal helpers and allowed them to go wherever the disabled person goes. Hopefully these stories will help to stop civil rights violations and let the country know what is going on. That is why we have freedom of the press…something that some people in this country wished didn’t exist either. We have a lot of work ahead of us to make this an equal country, but there are plenty of folks that want this to be so lets work together to make it reality.

We have all heard of the hecklers in the town meetings over the last few weeks but it is unbelievable what happened to this woman in New Jersey. Regardless of where you are in the political spectrum, there is no excuse to verbally assault someone who has the floor during a meeting. Plus there is no reason to attack someone personally because you do not want to hear their view. In a democracy we expect different ideas on how things are to be done so we can pick the best one for our country’s needs. No one has exclusive rights to good ideas such that no one else can speak their mind. Those that believe that  need to take an American government class so they can get a grasp on how this republic operates. Everyone has a right to speak their mind, regardless of how horrible it sounds to you.

How many of those that heckled this woman would be willing to drop their cable and Internet connection and live in public housing. If you do not have a chronic medical problem then you truly do not understand how things work for those that rely on Medicare and Medicaid. Many pills and procedures that are used everyday on those with private insurance find they cannot get help with Medicare. The dough nut hole requires people to come up with thousands of dollars of their own money before catastrophic care kicks in. Many live on social security and do  not have thousands to throw around so stop taking their medication until the beginning of the new year. That can be a death sentence to those on heart or cancer medications. Issues like these need to be fixed so that we do not kill our citizens in the name of controlling costs. Those on social security are not people that should not have rights. We have all worked hard and paid into the system and now find ourselves severely injured because of an auto accident or have been forced to retire at 65 and now are trying to make ends meet.

If we don’t deal with this soon, we will truly have two type of people in America, those that have and those that have not. Money should not be the only measurement to determine if someone should live or have constitutional rights. Those that work and are in power have a responsibility to help those that cannot  help themselves. If we don’t then we will not continue to be a world power as social issues will eat away at the basic structure of how our country works. Lets help everyone to be the best that they can be so we don’t have situations like we are creating now. Lets make sure we keep a country that gives everyone a chance to succeed so that everyone wants to emigrate here. If we don’t we will experience the brain drain that many countries experienced over the 20th century.

This is an awesome idea that we all need to push in our own communities. As a tetraplegic (only 1 good arm) I find it very difficult to find an MRI or Cat scan that can drop down to wheelchair level or has personnel trained to transfer the disabled. Some have personnel, but they refuse to help and management merely stands there and stares at you. It is obvious that there needs to be standards for hospitals and equipment owners like standalone MRI units so the disabled are given the same access as the able bodied. It would be nice if the medical community could get their collective act together and create something that they would all follow. Unfortunately, self policing is not the strong point of the medical institutions in the U.S., which points us to laws enacted at either the state or federal level.

State level laws could solve some of the worst problems but there are very different problems and concerns in each state that would need to be addressed. Unfortunately it would mean that the laws would be a mish-mash of things that would be enacted based on local hospitals and insurance companies. States with large insurance companies are going to reduce and control the help the disabled would get. Large hospitals would fight this because of cost and perceived burden in having to deal with additional disabled people. This situation would not be fair to the disabled in states with strong hospitals and insurance companies as they would not get the same level of help as other states.

Federal laws tend to take longer to pass but force all states to follow the same standards. Powerful local hospitals and insurance companies tend not to have the same level of power at the federal level that they show at the local state level. This would also let the national disability groups have their say on what challenges the disabled deal with at hospitals so we get actual disabled people helping to make decisions. The law created here would be more generic than the state level but it guarantees that we would not have a patchwork of laws that would be difficult to enforce and even harder to deal with if the disabled travel.

Regardless of which way we go, this is an excellent start to help those that spend a great deal of time in the hospital as compared to the able bodied. Lets hope that more disability groups take this as an opportunity to help everyone so that we have hospitals and other buildings that are easy to access and have equipment that have the same ease of use. It does not take much additional effort to make everything disability accessible, but it is usually very expensive to rip out what you already have and start over again.

Even though the United States passed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1993 which gave back civil rights to those whose only crime is the inability to walk or use their arms. As the United States usually pushes that it is the sole country that helps those to gain their civil rights, no one was able to explain why they refused to sign the convention. After 141 countries signed the accord, the Obama administration has finally decided to show that the the US backs the social rights of all disabled people and recognizes that they deserve the same rights as the able bodied enjoy. Susan Rice, the US Ambassador to the United Nations and Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to President Obama signed the convention for the United States, making it the 143rd nation to agree to follow the convention to open up civil rights to the disabled. After the signing the ambassador announced that the State Department will create a new senior position to deal exclusively with disability issues internationally. For the first time in 233 years, the United States has joined the world community in helping the disabled live more fruitful lives.

After dealing with many of the craziness of the Bush Administration and their inability to show the disabled any help it is wonderful to have a breath of fresh air from the Obama Administration. Regardless of which side of the political aisle you are on, everyone must agree that the disabled are individuals just like anyone else and should be given the same civil rights as the able bodied. The disabled had to deal with "ugly" laws through the 1970’s and still have to sue corporations that refuse to make building accessible, to hire the disabled, and refusing entrance to those with service animals. These are just a small number of problems the disabled deal with on a daily basis as people that do not want the disabled around pretend that the ADA does not exist and allow new homes to be built such that someone in a wheelchair could not live in it. There are laws that force builders to make sure that a paltry 5% of homes be accessible by a wheelchair to the first floor. Why not make it 100%? Why is it necessary to produce structures that have no easement for the disabled to use?

The disabled understand many of the issues that Black Americans deal with. Country clubs that disallow Blacks or the disabled are found all over the country. The rules are unwritten, but the lack of those of color or disability in these areas are a sad commentary that we have a way to go before we are all truly equal. Pundits scream that we are demanding "special" rights that no one else has and that the ADA should be rescinded. Perhaps they should be forced to live in a wheelchair for a week and see what we are up against. Life as the disabled is difficult because of medical issues, disability payments that do not allow you to feed a family of four in dignity, and cities and builders that create structure we can never enter. The ADA was a good start, and the Obama Administration signing of the UN convention shows that the United States can make good decisions that help everyone. Lets not forget about this and push forward so everyone can be the best they can be and live a life that is rewarding and successful.

If the many laws that Mr. Kennedy championed never became laws, we would all be living in a much different America. The Senator proved that one person could make a major difference in congress and America. We at SCRN ask you our readers to call or write your congressmen to let them know how you feel about the issues of the day. Most probably believe that Washington D.C. is too impenetrable or that no one wants to hear from them. Nothing is further from the truth and Senator Kennedy proved it every day. We called our congressman about two weeks ago to get information about a town hall meeting and to discuss our medical system. The person on the phone was helpful and sent to a another person who listened to what we had to say and asked good questions back. This is not the way indifferent people work, these folks want to do the right thing and the only way they know how is to listen to you. It is hoped that this death gives you a few moments to think about what our government provides to us and what can be done better. Sure things are frustrating and everything may not go your way but that is not a reason to give up. The disabled have usually had to deal with way more than a bad day and we all need to do our part. Democracy is not a spectator sport and Senator Kennedy was there to make the important votes, even when he was very sick for the last year of his life. Lets all take the opportunity to do better than we have before, help those around us and let your officials that you pay know what is on your mind. That way we all win with a better country and you knowing that you helped to make a difference – just like Ted did for all those years in the senate.