I’m not typically a political animal, but, given the current state of the union, the proposals on the table, and how it will affect my child…I’ll ask you to forgive my cynicism and distrust in the vague generalities and inconsistencies I subjected myself to this morning.
I’ve now heard and read her speech. Great, we’re going to freeze spending, but fully fund IDEA. What happens to other programs in the Domestic Discretionary Budget for that to happen? Pell Grants, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, WIC, clean-energy research, Section 8 housing — dozens and dozens of programs will need to be cut by an average of 6.4%. Yeah.While she hooked the ticket up to the idea of funding IDEA, there was no strong commitment to it, nor plan proposed for implementing it.

She completely ignored the Community Choice Act (CCA) which would make $$ that is normally spent on institutionalization available for home-based care.

She talked about ‘choices’ in education (private vs public), but made no mention of any guidelines that would prevent schools from discriminating against our children based on test scores.

As she rightly said “For many parents of children with disabilities, the most valuable thing of all is information.” What she totally glossed over, though, is that the information comes through sources her ticket is NOT endorsing: guaranteed medical coverage for all children. Where does most of our early information about our children and their ‘condition’ come from? Our doctors. Doctors our children won’t see without insurance. Therapists that our children won’t see without coverage. Visiting nurses that will no longer ‘visit’ us because our child isn’t able to get insurance (‘pre-existing’ and ‘congenital’ often are treated the same by insurance companies).

First we have to GET information — from healthcare providers – and we need insurance for that!! Then, we need to be able to access services – and we need insurance for that!! Am I the only one seeing the disconnect here?

I think the commitment to education is great, really, but what about EI therapies? What about AFTER school is over with? It’s all well and good to say “We’ll give you a ton of educational choices.” but it does me no good if I can’t afford medical coverage for a child who may not SURVIVE until school age without OHS; nor does it benefit me, as the parent of a 30 yo who needs day-to-day assistance to know that she ‘could have gone to private school.’

Frankly, this speech was a disappointment on many levels. Not the least of which was the underlying assumption that education was the main concern of parents of children w/ special needs. We want them educated, yes – but HEALTHY children learn better than UNhealthy children. It has to be from the bottom up – healthy children learn better. You can’t go ‘top-down’ — you can’t ‘teach a child healthy.’

So far, the M/P ticket has not impressed me on this issue.

My Cool 1/2Million$ Baby

(who probably would have died by now under McCain’s health plan because there’s no protections against insurance companies denying people for pre-existing conditions and we wouldn’t have been able to afford high-risk pool insurance — thank God for employer-based coverage!)