Rallying to Save Colorado Jobs and Homes for Disabled Residents

Jeanie Benfield is not an average person. Spend five minutes with her and you soon realize how intelligent, how compassionate, and how hard-working she is. Stretch that five minutes a little longer, and you’ll notice she harnesses these traits to advocate for her community. Stick around long enough, you’ll see she does a damn good job of it.

Benfield is quadriplegic and relies on Medicaid to pay for the group home she lives in and the people who take care of essentials like getting her out of bed, dressed, bathed, and fed.

“Without Medicaid, I would die. This would be a senseless waste; I’m a productive member of my community,” she said.
For Benfield, this fight is not new. She said her disability is the result of a broken healthcare system.

When her mother needed a C-section, Benfield said she wasn’t given one because the doctor wasn’t sure her parents could pay for it. As a result, the lack of oxygen severely damaged the part of her brain that controls her muscles.

“I sometimes wonder if the doctor would have made a different choice if it were he who had to live with the disability his choice caused. If our nation had single-payer health care, the doctor would have just done the C-section without worrying,” she said.

Benfield is one of the estimated 1.3 million Coloradans who benefit from Medicaid, a state- and federally-funded health care program. She, among hundreds like herself, is concerned efforts to overturn Obamacare will take down programs that have nothing to do with it — programs that keep disabled people out of institutions and in community homes, jobs, and day programs.

“Our fear is it’s going to be death by a thousand cuts,” said Julie Reiskin, executive director of Colorado Cross Disability Coalition. She helped organize a recent rally outside Senator Cory Gardner’s Denver office.

Activists are targeting Gardner because he was on a republican senate committee working to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and replace it with a new plan, a plan Reiskin says could take down long-standing Colorado programs.

“People with all types of significant disabilities, including those with intellectual disabilities, rely on home- and community-based services [that] have been around since the ‘80s,” Reiskin said.

Nicole McBride is among those who’ve benefitted from Colorado services since the ‘80s. She is proud of what she’s done with the benefits offered her.

“I get a house to live in, I get food, I get a place to work at that helps me with my disability. I get to work without people judging me,” she said.
McBride is one of Colorado’s most vulnerable residents. She’s a woman. She’s a lesbian. She’s developmentally disabled.

With an I.Q. under 70, McBride requires long-term care. She lives in a host home. Much like adult foster care, host homes allow people who would otherwise be institutionalized to be a part of a family, to live with people who are trained to care for them. She works at Jack’s and Steamers, a restaurant and prep-kitchen that trains and hires people with intellectual challenges.

“Nicole is like the all-around go-to person,” said Garrett McGovern, the executive chef and kitchen manager. While McBride works as a dishwasher, she’s also learning skills like food preparation, bussing tables, making jam, and plating food.

McBride and others like her not only contribute to the economy by spending the money they earn, they also must pay back into Medicaid to help sustain the program. In McBride’s case, half of her paycheck goes back to Medicaid.

She is not alone in this.

Jo Booms, a budding archeologist, had to quit her dream job when a rare genetic disorder made it impossible for her to function full-time.

Mental and physical challenges meant she needed to find a different profession. Booms began working with developmentally disabled people until her disorder progressed to the point where she could only work a few hours a week.

“It doesn’t make sense to take away a program that allows me to be healthy enough to be employed,” Booms said.

“The problem is not that people on Medicaid are over-served; if anything they are underserved. We have a long way to go in Medicaid reform. We need more Medicaid, not less,” she continued.

If Medicaid doesn’t pay for the weekly shots she needs to stay alive and healthy, she says she won’t even be able to work the hours she works now. What’s worse is she’ll be confined to bed, and taxpayers will end up paying more, as her disability benefits would need to be increased.
“The more income I have, the more spending power I have, the more I give back to the economy,” she said.

Helping people give back to the economy is a passion of Melisa Kraai’s. She co-owns and manages SustAinability, a recycling company that employs more than 140 people with intellectual challenges.

“The very point of services is to decrease [them] over time,” she said. She wants republicans to hear and understand that programs like hers take people out of taxpayer-funded day programs and put them to work. Ultimately, the goal is to help as many people as possible get off Medicaid and support themselves.

As members of the LGBTQ community, Booms, McBride, and Kraai understand discrimination and work hard to fight against it on several fronts.

Sarah Smith is the Program Director at Jack’s and Steamers. She helps train and oversee the disabled people who work there. Both SustainAbility and Jack’s and Steamers face the possibility of shutting down if Medicaid cuts are substantial.

“For many people with disabilities, Medicaid is a lifeline; it allows people to work, recreate, make friends, learn, and live,” Smith said. “Without Medicaid, it is possible that Steamers’ approximately 70 employees with disabilities will be out of a job and — worse for some — without access to community-based services in general, which would put people back in institutions.”

Colorado is one of the states that helped lead the way in getting disabled people out of sterile institutions and into family homes. Medicaid cuts could force people like McBride, Benfield, and Booms into nursing homes or worse.

“We don’t have institutions — we’ve dismantled them all,” said Reiskin. “We really don’t know where they would go.”

But Reiskin isn’t giving up.

While Senator Michael Bennet told a town hall meeting he sees republicans masquerading Medicaid cuts as a health care bill, many republicans do support the cuts.

“A lot of what we’ve heard about is pre-existing conditions,” Reiskin said. But, she pointed out, “Medicaid is the only support for long-term care. Private insurance doesn’t cover it. Neither does Medicare.”

Because of a Colorado constitutional amendment passed in the ‘90s, if Medicaid dollars are cut, the state cannot fund needed programs without voter approval.

Everyone interviewed agreed salaries for those who care for disabled people are too low. “In some places they’re dangerously low,” said Reiskin. If the state can’t afford to hire enough caretakers or good managers, it leaves the door open for abuse.

This is something Benfield fights against.

“The staff who keep me alive really should be paid more than if they were flipping hamburgers; I’m a human being, not a hamburger.”