Presumptive GOP Presidential Nominee McCain Says He Supports Legislation To Expand ADA Protections

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 29 Jul 2008 - 11:00 PDT

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Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) on Saturday during a disabilities forum in Columbus, Ohio, said that he supports legislation that would revise the definition of a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act and extend protections for individuals with disabilities, the AP/Kansas City Star reports. McCain, who spoke at the forum by satellite from Arizona, said, "We must clarify the definition of a disability to ensure full protection for those the law is intended to serve."

In recent years, the Supreme Court has ruled that the law does not apply to individuals with partial physical disabilities or those with physical impairments who can manage their conditions with medications or medical devices, such as hearing aids. The House in June passed a bill (HR 3195) that would extend ADA protections to individuals who take medications to manage epilepsy, diabetes or cancer, as well as those who use prosthetic limbs.

McCain, who co-sponsored ADA in 1990, said that he supports a companion bill (S 1881) under consideration in the Senate. He added, "In all due respect, I would put the blame right back on us for not writing legislation that is strong enough and specific enough so that the Supreme Court wouldn't even have to consider these cases." Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), who did not attend the forum, previously has said that he supports the legislation (Billeaud, AP/Kansas City Star, 7/26).

Editorial Cites Need for Medicare Reform
"When it comes time for the presidential candidates and Congress to seriously debate the most challenging issues facing America, soon we hope, comprehensive reform of Medicare should be at the top of the list" of priorities, a Baltimore Sun editorial states.

According to the editorial, the cost of "programs that provide basic care for senior citizens are looming with no relief in sight," and, "with the 77 million-strong baby boomers poised to retire, costs are expected to explode." The editorial states, "Spending these amounts might be acceptable if all that money went to provide excellent care, but the opposite is true," as an "enormous share of Medicare spending is lost because of inefficiencies and fraud, while the quality of care is poor compared with what is offered in other developed countries."

The editorial adds that "much better care could be achieved with new strategies that would achieve significant savings." Such strategies include proposals that would pay physicians "stipends to proactively treat patients, based on their age and medical conditions, instead of making payments for each test and treatment"; decrease hospital readmissions or unnecessary hospitalizations; reduce health insurance administrative costs to the average level of other nations; expand use of electronic health records; and improve management to reduce the $60 billion lost to Medicare fraud (Baltimore Sun, 7/28).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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