COFAR has joined with AFSCME Council 93, a key Massachusetts state employee union, in warning that President Biden’s proposed $400 billion expansion of home and community-based services for people with disabilities and the elderly could pose a threat to the future of state-run services.

In a jointly written letter to U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, COFAR President Thomas J. Frain and AFSCME Council 93 Executive Director Mark Bernard expressed overall support for Biden’s proposed expansion of access to affordable home and community-based services (HCBS) for people with I/DD and the elderly.

But the letter noted that Biden’s plan fails to similarly propose any additional funding for state-run Intermediate Care Facilities (ICFs) for persons with I/DD and complex medical needs.

Expanding only HCBS, the letter said, would pose “a serious threat to the future of critically important ICF-level care in this country…(and would) interfere with the ability of individuals, particularly those with severe forms of I/DD, to access the residential settings and programs that meet their needs.”

Biden’s $400 billion HCBS expansion plan is part of his $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, a proposal to Congress to rebuild the American economy and the nation’s infrastructure.

The two remaining state-run ICFs in Massachusetts are the Wrentham Developmental Center and the Hogan Regional Center in Danvers.

Steering increased funding only toward community care would create a strong incentive for Massachusetts to close the Wrentham and Hogan facilities, the AFSCME-COFAR letter stated.

In addition to stripping the DDS system of a badly-needed component of the continuum of care for the developmentally disabled, the closure of the ICFs would jeopardize the jobs of approximately 1,400 union workers represented by AFSCME alone.

ICFs provide needed choice

The joint letter noted that choice in care is only meaningful if individuals are given access to the services that they need and prefer. As the United States Supreme Court held in the 1999 Olmstead v. L.C. case, there must be a recognition that, on a case-by-case basis, that setting might be in an ICF.

But the Massachusetts DDS does not routinely inform either individuals or their families who are waiting for residential placements even of the existence of either ICFs or state-operated group homes. The only “choices” routinely offered are corporate provider-run group homes or, in some cases, shared living arrangements. As such, families do not have a real choice along a full continuum of care.

The number of residents at the Wrentham and Hogan ICFs and in state-operated group homes has been declining in Massachusetts for several years. State funding for state-operated services has also been flat or has declined over the past decade.

In contrast, funding has skyrocketed for corporate, provider-run group homes. Successive administrations have long engaged in a race to privatize DDS services.

Calling for parity

The joint letter noted that In Fiscal Year 2019, Medicaid spending nationwide was $76 billion for HCBS and $9 billion for ICFs. Out of total Medicaid spending nationwide for long-term supports and services, 59% was spent on HCBS and 7% on ICFs.

If the Massachusetts Legislature concurs with Governor Baker’s proposed funding for DDS for Fiscal Year 2022, the corporate provider line item will be funded at more than $1.4 billion. That would represent a 91% increase over the funding appropriated for the same line item a decade previously, in Fiscal 2012.

In contrast, funding for state-operated group homes and the two remaining ICFs has been on a relatively flat or downward trajectory respectively.

When adjusted for inflation, the governor’s Fiscal 2022 budget would cut funding for state-operated group homes by somewhat less than 1% from the current fiscal year. The Wrentham and Hogan centers would similarly see their funding cut in Fiscal 2022 by a total of $2.1 million. Since Fiscal 2012, funding for the developmental center line item will have been cut by 32%.

The joint letter stated that the ongoing under-funding of state-run DDS programs has resulted in the increasing privatization of those programs and services.

Massachusetts State Auditor Suzanne Bump’s office reported in 2019 that while the resulting boost in state funding for privatized care produced surplus revenues for corporate providers, those additional revenues led to only minimal increases in wages for direct-care workers.

Disparity in care

The joint letter stated that In 1993, then U.S. District Court Judge Joseph L. Tauro ordered that ICFs in Massachusetts not be closed unless it was certified that each resident would receive equal or better care elsewhere. Judge Tauro was bringing an end to a landmark consent decree (Ricci v. Okin), which had resulted in major upgrades in care and services in the DDS system.

As the years went on, however, the promise of equal or better care in the community was not realized. Deinstitutionalization has turned out to be fraught with problems for people with I/DD just as it has for people with mental illness.

In testimony in 2018 to the state Legislature’s Children, Families, and Persons with Disabilities Committee, Nancy Alterio, executive director of the Massachusetts Disabled Persons Protection Commission (DPPC), stated that abuse and neglect in the DDS system had increased 30 percent in the previous five years, and had reached epidemic proportions.

Yet many advocates for corporate providers, such as the Arc of Massachusetts, have pushed for decades for complete deinstitutionalization and for additional privatization of services for people with I/DD. They have been joined by administrations at the state and national levels, which have continually made state-run care and services targets for closure and outsourcing to contracted providers.

Since 2009, the U.S. Justice Department has filed, joined, or participated in lawsuits around the country to close ICFs regardless of whether the residents or their families or guardians wanted to close the facilities they were living in or not.

Olmstead did not call for the closure of ICFs

The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion in the Olmstead case (referred to above). The decision has continued to be mischaracterized as advocating or requiring the end of institutional care. It didn’t. Justice Ginsburg wrote a balanced decision that “supports both the right to an inclusive environment and the right to institutional care, based on the need and desires of the individual.”

The incestuous nature of the privatized system

The closures of ICFs around the country and the rise of the privatized system of care have provided financial windfalls for politically connected corporate contractors. Their executives have garnered large increases in their personal compensation, but have frequently neglected to pass through the higher levels of state funding to direct-care workers. That is one of the reasons for the epidemic of abuse and neglect in the corporate provider-based system of care.

In 2015, COFAR calculated that more than 600 executives employed by corporate human service providers in Massachusetts received some $100 million per year in salaries and other compensation. By COFAR’s calculations, state taxpayers were on the hook each year for up to $85 million of that total compensation.

What we are asking for

The COFAR-AFSCME letter asked for Senator Warren’s support in achieving the following goals:

Parity in public-sector funding for ICFs and other state-run services with funding for privatized services. The letter suggested that an increase in the federal Medicaid match for HCBS should be matched by an increase in matching funding for ICFs. For example, a 10-percentage point increase in the federal match (FMAP) for ICFs would be roughly $1 billion nationwide.

Ensuring a dedicated funding stream for state-operated group homes for individuals with I/DD.