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Funds allow states to offer home-based care without waiver
Source: Steve Gold, www.stevegoldada.com
Section 6086 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 offers States a new opportunity to provide a full (or partial) range of community-based services for seniors and people with disabilities. As of January 2007, states can use this new statutory provision without applying for a Medicaid waiver.
Here are some important aspects of Section 6086:
It applies to seniors and people with disabilities with incomes up to 150% of the poverty level: $14,700 for a single person and $19,800 for a couple. These income levels are higher than many States now provide for either MA community-based waiver services or MA state plan services.
These services can be targeted to persons BEFORE they go into a nursing home. This is important because, nationally, 11.8% of the persons IN nursing homes went into them directly from their own homes and had NOT been receiving any home health services for entering the institution.
Unlike the Medicaid Waiver, there is no requirement under Section 6086 that persons meet nursing home level of care criteria.
These services can be consumer directed.
To learn more about this important Act, visit the National Disability Rights Network website at: www.napas.org/policy/DRA/CRS%20report%20HCBS%20Option.pdf.
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Mental Health Parity Bill introduced in House
Representatives Patrick J. Kennedy (D-RI) and Jim Ramstad (R-MN) introduced the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act (H.R. 1367) to require mental health benefits offered by group plans with 50 or more enrollees be equal to coverage for other medical conditions. This includes application to co-payments, co-insurance, deductibles, out-of-pocket limits, and day and visit limits.
A similar bill, S. 558, was approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on February 14. The differences between the House and Senate bill include designation of which mental health and addiction disorders are covered. The
House bill is modeled on the health plans that apply to Members of Congress and federal workers.
If you are a mental health consumer it is important that you keep track of the status of this bill. Contact your representative to let them know how you feel about this important legislation.
To locate your representative, visit the House website at www.house.gov.
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Many people suffer with low self-esteem. The interesting thing is that your self-esteem is not dependent on the facts; it is dependent on your interpretation of the facts. Here is a simple strategy to improve your self-esteem in such a way that it improves your life as well.
Self-esteem is determined by how you habitually think about yourself and the events of your life. This habitual thinking pattern creates a self-image that determines how you feel about yourself and it may be an image that is anywhere between being totally in line with the facts to being totally misaligned with the facts.
Some peoples' self-esteem is far higher than the facts warrant while others have self-esteem that is far lower than the facts would suggest it should be.
So what makes a healthy self-esteem? A healthy self-esteem is one that allows you to appreciate yourself and have self-confidence, while at the same time keeping you grounded enough that you are aware that you could still benefit from self-development.
No matter who you are and no matter what your current level of self-esteem is you will definitely have good points. An important step in acquiring and maintaining healthy self-esteem is to appreciate those good points.
Our society tends to admire the extremes; the rich, the famous, the slim, the beautiful, the clever, the talented, and so on. While this is fine in itself, the problem exists that our society also looks down on those who aren't in those categories. This can lead to you developing self-critical habits early in life and maintaining those habits throughout your life.
This low self-esteem then often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because it stops you from setting goals and working successfully towards them.
Make a decision today to appreciate all of your good points and to congratulate yourself for being so fortunate as to have all these good qualities.
It's amazing to hear how people talk to themselves when things go wrong. They will call themselves idiots. They will tell themselves that nothing ever works out well for me. They will be critical in every way without even stopping to think of the damage that they are inflicting on themselves by this verbal criticism.
Imagine that you want to help a child to learn to tie her own shoelaces. Would you be understanding of the difficulties and encouraging of her efforts or would you say "why are so stupid? Any idiot can tie their shoelaces but you are so useless that all you do is mess it up"? I sincerely hope that you would use the first method.
This first method of encouragement and understanding is exactly how you should speak to yourself. Your subconscious mind, which is where your self-esteem resides, is far more like a little child than it is like your adult conscious mind. Develop the habit of speaking to yourself with respect, encouragement and understanding.
Have you ever found that sometimes other people can be unjustly critical of your goals or of your behavior? Being critical of others is simply a sign of poor personal development. It is an unfortunate truth that you will encounter these enlightened folk on a regular basis so you need to have a strategy for dealing with them.