It’s been a little more than a week now since the United State Supreme Court ruled that the majority of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (referred to as ACA) was constitutionally allowable. People with disabilities will be impacted by the decision as much as any single group of individuals; and, by and large, advocacy organizations and journalists covering the topic feel the outcome will have a positive impact on the healthcare services these people access.
On DisabilityScoop.com, Michelle Diament highlighted some of the ACA’s major benefits for people with disabilities, including matching federal funds for community living initiatives and putting mental health, behavioral health habilitation, and rehabilitation services under the category of “essential benefits” that health insurance plans will be required to cover. Given how much individuals with disabilities and their families depend on these programs, National Council on Disability chair Jonathan Young tells Diament that upholding the law “is arguably the most significant decision since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act 22 years ago.”
American Association of People with Disabilities president and CEO Mark Perriello has tied success of the ACA to better employment prospects for his constituency since assuming the leadership mantel in 2011. Remarks he made to a Detroit News reporter last December were echoed in a press release by the Michigan-based firm, Big Tent Jobs, LLC. Founder and CEO Adam Kaplan timed the release with America’s July Fourth Independence Day celebration to illustrate the freedom and flexibility his clients might potentially gain from the ruling:
“For far too long, talented people with disabilities or chronic conditions have had to make a difficult and unfair choice: either impoverish themselves to qualify for Medicaid to cover their health needs, or secure meaningful employment but risk an expensive and potentially physically and financially devastating health care incident…Now, gifted technical professionals with disabilities or chronic conditions, including IT Directors, Software Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Accountants and Financial Analysts, can concentrate on the work they do to make our companies achieve the profitable growth that makes the U.S. economy stronger.”
While Kapan’s vision pertains to the type of employment in which his organization specializes; it’s easy to see the ramifications of the ACA being upheld across all sectors, including contact services labor where a business may engage a group of individuals with disabilities to do project-based work such as light assembly, packing and sorting. As Nirvi Shah points out in a blog post for Education Week, the law will also aid education and career training for young people with disabilities by enabling them to remain covered by their parents’ health insurance plans until age 26. Even with the portion that required states to expand Medicaid being struck down, the Supreme Court’s decision on the ACA will truly help make life matter more for individuals with disabilities.
Image by Listener42, used under its Creative Commons license