>My misgivings w/a constitutional amendment is that it
>distracts from real, important, and ongoing battles that
>I think can be won. I mean the push to expand Medicaid,
>provide prescription drug benefits, and fully fund
>the State Childrens Health Insurance Program. As
>I mentioned, for all the inadequacies of the present
>system, it has markedly advanced in the past, in
>contrast to many other areas of social need.
It seems that expansion can go well or sour. W., for instance, proposed using the SCHIP funds for those who lost jobs and are uninsured due to the recession. Although Clinton did do something, the movement is usually NOT to spend more necessarily but towards "flexibility" which puts the states in the position to shred the program or to improve it based on their budgets. Since Medicaid has no hard and fast rules re benefits that I am aware of on the federal level, the states can pretty much do what they want to. As you can imagine some states do as little as possible. It really does matter WHAT state one lives in regarding how much "care" they get. So that means that the activism has to be strong on a state by state basis, rather than united as one front nationally. That really impedes overall improvement.
>
>As you know, one can have rights to benefits without
>benefit of a constitutional amendment, and one can
>have an amendment but no effective rights.
So it is, but a constitutional amendment would give some backbone to the social justice issue at hand here -- which is that no one disabled or nondisabled needs to go without health care. Pushing for one does not mean excluding the other (expansion of Medicaid).
best, marta
-- Marta Russell Los Angeles, CA www.disweb.org