For more than 20 years, the IDEA has guaranteed free, appropriate public education to students with disabilities. Today, it helps more than 5.7 million students across the U.S. reach their full potential. High school graduates with disabilities under IDEA have achieved an employment rate twice that of the overall population of individuals with disabilities. The new reauthorization legislation strengthens and reaffirms our commitment to disabled children and their parents by emphasizing educational results and by providing better support for parents. The preservation of Medicaid coverage and the availability of insurance to those Americans with a pre-existing condition remains unstable.
Many employers view people with disabilities as an increase to their insurance costs.
I refuse to go backwards on health care coverage for Americans with disabilities, and I have worked hard to ensure that this does not happen. I vetoed proposals that would have ended Medicaid's guarantee of meaningful health benefits to 6 million people with disabilities, including 1 million children. I signed the Kennedy-Kassebaum health insurance reform bill to strengthen the health security of people with disabilities and all Americans. And, I supported greater flexibility in granting state waivers. As a result, the number of people with developmental or cognitive disabilities served in home and community waiver programs more than doubled in 1995, to 149,000.