Cops Help Activist With Her Medicare Message
By Dave Reynolds,
Inclusion Daily Express
December 5, 2006
WEST JORDAN, UTAH--A
disability rights activist, who wanted the public to know that Medicare
policies are forcing her ex-husband to be held in a nursing home against his
will, got help Friday from an unexpected source -- police officers.
Ricki Landers told the Deseret News that she and five supporters planned
to stop traffic on a major thoroughfare during Friday evening rush hour to draw
attention to the fact that ex-husband Gail Hansen has to stay in a nursing home
for three weeks because the federal health insurance program won't otherwise
pay for the medications he needs to fight an infection.
West Jordan police officers saw Landers in her wheelchair holding her
homemade sign asking motorists for help in changing Medicare Part D rules. The
officers met the group on the site and told them it was too dangerous and
illegal to try stopping traffic. They told Landers, however, that she might get
a better response if she contacted a newspaper reporter, and parked on the
sidewalk near the corner of the intersection. They then escorted her to a
prominent spot, and reportedly blocked a turn lane for 20 minutes while she
held up her sign for all to see.
A columnist with the Salt Lake Tribune noted that U.S. Senator Orrin
Hatch's office spent several hours trying unsuccessfully to find a pharmacy
that would donate the antibiotics Mr. Hansen needs so he can go home.
Landers participated with nearly 200 members of the grassroots
disability advocacy group ADAPT in the 2003 "Free Our People" march from
Philadelphia to Washington, DC. The action was designed to build support for
MiCASSA, the Medicaid Community based Attendant Services and Supports Act,
which would shift the bias in long-term care money away from nursing homes and
other institutions so more people could receive community-based attendant
services in their homes.
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Reproduced here under special arrangement
with Inclusion Daily Express international disability rights news service.
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