Skip to main content

Disabled Protesters Stage 'Die-In' over Senate Health Care Bill Rollout

Share This article

WASHINGTON -- As Senate GOP leaders released their new plan Thursday to dismantle Obamacare, a group of disabled protestors gathered outside the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to protest the measure's cuts to Medicaid.

Dozens of demonstrators, some of them in wheelchairs, blocked the hallway outside the Kentucky lawmaker's office, chanting "no cuts to Medicaid, save our liberties."  

The rally was organized by National ADAPT, a grassroots group that bills itself as the "body and soul of the disability movement."

"Right now 60 disability rights advocates are staging a die-in in front of Senator McConnell's office to protest cuts to Medicaid which will eliminate home and community-based services that have secured disabled people's freedom," the group said in a Facebook post.

Earlier, upon unveiling the long-awaited bill, McConnell defended the plan, saying Obamacare is a direct attack on the middle class. But Thursday's disabled demonstrators view the new Senate plan as an attack on them.

Medicaid waivers, supported in part by federal dollars, allow disabled people to live at home rather than at nursing centers. That's because those waivers pay for health care services not covered by health insurance.

"Disabled people have the same right under the Constitution to liberty as every other American," disability advocate Tari Hartman Squire wrote in a Facebook post. "For most disabled people, that right is secured through Medicaid home and community based services."

"Senator McConnell's American Health Care Act is going to violate those rights," she continued. "Today is the 18th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Olmstead decision which recognized that right, and it is an insult to the Disability Community that today Senator McConnell is going to release a bill which eliminates that right for millions of disabled Americans."

Share This article

About The Author

CBN News