Action Alerts

Ongoing:

• Health Care Reform: Now It's Personal
• Don't Miss This Critical Opportunity to Improve Medicaid Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) Waivers - Comments Due to CMS on Friday, August 21

Major Events Last Week

U.S. Congress

The Congress remained on summer recess but stayed in the news as Members of Congress held town hall meetings on health care reform. Many gatherings hosted by Democratic Members were disrupted by opponents of health care reform whose opposition, in many cases, was based on inaccuracies about the proposals being considered.

Health Care Reform

To clarify the misconceptions about the health care reform proposals, the House Education and Labor Committee has published "Health Care Checkup: A line-by-line rebuttal to false information can be accessed at
http://edlabor.house.gov/blog/2009/08/health-care-checkup-a-line-by-.shtml

Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Mrs. Shriver died on August 11. She was instrumental over the past decades in bringing public attention to the status of children and adults with intellectual disabilities in our society. She worked often with the U. S. Congress to secure services, supports, benefits and rights for people with intellectual disabilities and their families. She was also instrumental in creating the Kennedy Foundation Public Policy Fellows program that brought many future leaders in our field to Washington to learn about national public policy. Several of the Kennedy Fellows spent time at the DPC. The Arc and United Cerebral Palsy mourn her death.

DPC Director Paul Marchand paid tribute to Mrs. Shriver in an appearance on National Public Radio and in a story in the Christian Science Monitor.

Major Events Ahead

Medicaid

Public comments on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Home and Community-Based Services Waiver program are due by 5:00 pm on Friday, August 21. The ANPRM is located at: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-14559.pdf. The DPC plans to send its comments to chapters and affiliates by Tuesday (8/18). Affiliates and Chapters are encouraged to use the DPC comments as a guide and to submit their own comments directly to CMS.

Education

Stimulus: The Second Wave
Thursday, Aug. 20, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern Time

The U.S. Department of Education is gearing up to award $5 billion from the federal economic-stimulus package to school districts, states, and education nonprofit organizations through several competitive grant programs. What are the requirements for Race to the Top, Innovation, and other grant programs? How can leaders best compete for those awards? And how can the money be used to drive education reform?

Join a high-level official from the education department and a state education commissioner, as they discuss the details of the grant competitions and the education reform challenges ahead for K-12 leaders.

Follow this link to register for this free, live event. Registration is now open.

Announcements

Disability Policy Collaboration

The DPC says goodbye and thanks to Tom Webb, a Kennedy Foundation Fellow who spent over six months working on public policy with the DPC. Tom has moved on to head up the Student Disability Office at McDaniel (MD) College.

Please note that you can view previous issues of the Capitol Insider, at UCP.org anytime by choosing "Capitol Insider" under "Public Policy."

Read previous Capitol Insider issues now.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at acosta@thedpc.org.

Sincerely,

Annie Acosta
Director of Communications and Grassroots
Disability Policy Collaboration