This means that Medicaid money has preferentially been funnelled into nursing homes for 35 years. Not surprisingly, the American Health Care Association, the nursing home lobby is one of the greatest contributors to all political campaigns. Non-medical services delivered in a person's own home, under that person's control, are not an entitlement. However most people who need help with specific tasks, such as transferring into and out of a wheelchair, cleaning house, or reading, can be assisted by non-medical personnel with far more personal dignity than any institution provides, and at far less public expense than the roughly forty billion dollars spent annually on institutions. They want to be the one to decide when they'll go to bed and get up.
Nobody wants to be in a position where the attendant . . .
The Jewish law that forbids inflicting humiliation on the poor could not be fulfilled by our ancestors in the desert, where all alike were economically dependent directly on G-d. Then as now, although in a very different situation, respect for the divine image in all people is intimately connected to real freedom in a real home. The ADA provides a legal basis for allowing disabled people to live as free people rather than permanent prisoners. In practice, this means that Medicaid funds cannot be legitimately used to arbitrarily incarcerate people. Using the ADA, Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson sued the state of Georgia for forcing them into an institution to get the daily services they needed.