Today, we affirm that we all deserve the chance to fully participate in society and remember the brave activists who took charge — getting out of their wheelchairs and crawling up the steps of the U.S. Capitol on March 12, 1990, to demand our basic human rights. Hundreds of people with disabilities took part in this action and were the catalyst in pushing Congress to move forward and pass this landmark civil rights bill.
We recognize that for all its successes, the Americans with Disabilities Act is not sufficient in its guarantee of disability equity and accessibility. For example, people with disabilities who have multiple identities, such as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color with disabilities and/or members of the LGBTQIA+ communities with disabilities.
While there is still a long way to go, here in Oregon and beyond – we remain committed to building a more inclusive, accessible, and equitable state for all.
​Get Involved!
Celebrate the ADA's anniversary and tell us your story! Use any media of your choosing (video, pictures, written word, or other) and share on social media:
Facebook: #ThanksToTheADA. 
Twitter: #ThanksToTheADA #ADA32 #ADANetwork #DisabilityPride 
Thanks for joining us in this fight.

Steph Newton,
Chair, DPO Disability Justice Caucus
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PS - For more information on our Disability Justice Caucus, please sign up using the link below or join us at our next meeting, which will be held during the Democratic Party of Oregon's third quarter State Central Committee meeting on August 20-21. Details here.

Background: In 2016, the Trump administration introduced a program that contracts with private entities to do Medicare’s job of paying the bills of enrollees. The contractors are given a fixed amount of money to cover a given number of patients. They can keep up to 40% of the money to do what traditional Medicare does with only a 2 percent overhead.
The essential elements of this program are being continued under the Biden administration’s REACH program. The Medicare and Medicaid Center for Innovation has announced that it plans to force all seniors into this program by 2030, completely privatizing Medicare. Traditional Medicare will be eliminated, leaving a system with all the problems of private insurance that is much more expensive than even Medicare Advantage.
Consequences of REACH:  

• Enrollees who’ve chosen traditional Medicare are forced into private plans. 
• Patients lose choice of providers due to restricted provider panels. 
• An incentive was created to deny care to maximize profit. 
• Inappropriate denials of care and payment increase death and morbidity. 
• Taxpayers and enrollees are forced to pay for an outrageously expensive system that prioritizes maximizing profits over patient care outcomes. 
• Privatizing Medicare will make it virtually impossible to create an efficient and high quality system of universal, publicly funded health care. 
• Unless the President halts the program, Congress is powerless to act.   

What you can do:  

1. Write, call, and email your members of Congress telling them to demand that Biden act. Find their contact information at congress.gov/members. 
2. Speak up at town halls during the August recess. 
3. Write letters to the editor. 
4. Share this with friends, coworkers, neighbors, and groups to which you belong. 
5. Learn more at Physicians for a National Health Program: pnhp.org 

Information provided by Rick Staggenborg, Linn County Democrat and Linn County chair of Health Care for All Oregon.