KS GOP activist calls state neurological institute a "taxpayer draining piece of garbage"

[proud2BlibKansan]

This is just appalling. The state institute, KNI, is for profoundly disabled adults. Many are in diapers and on feeding tubes. Gov. Brownback has criticized the high cost of caring for patients at KNI.

More garbage from the party of pro-life!

http://cjonline.com/news/state/2011-10-22/gop-activist-disparages-topekas-kni

[Botany]

1. They have no shame

"Egan is on the board of the Kansas State Rifle Association and active in Kansans for Life."

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. OMG the comments!

Some guy whose name is 'firemanemt' is claiming the state spends $29 million a year on KNI, and claims the patients are "people we are supporting that have never or will never contribute anything to society".

[Botany]

6. Only minutes from Mr. Egan apology that he was taken ....

.... out of context.

This is what happenes when you listen to Rush, Cunningham, and read News max.

[Zoeisright]

9. Whenever I hear some liar saying that, I just

ask them to put their statements IN context so it means what they want it to.

After that, they are speechless.

[SkyDaddy7]

7. Those are classic Tea Bagger comments!

They spew such garbage until it is their family member who needs such care 7 then they will act as if they never said such things!

[jwirr]

14. This guy is an idiot but he may be right about the amount of money.

When I helped remove several clients from one of our state institutions they each cost a quarter of a million a year. You need to remember that the institution is unionized and every worker there is. That is why it is cheaper to keep them at home. My daughter has a foster mother/father, a bath lady, respite care that are not college trained. They are all supervised by a social worker, a RN and me who are college trained. I do not get paid as I am both mother and guardian.

There are other professionals that are involved also but they are contracted for services not full time care.

When I went to the county board to get permission to bring them home my best argument was the money. I asked them why they were paying the money to another county when they could have the clients in their own area and have the money to spend right here.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. Wow. Not sure where to begin with this.

As if something is wrong with workers belonging to a union and/or earning a decent salary.

I'm also assuming you and the teabagger who figured the cost forgot to include costs other than salaries, like equipment and facilities.

I will never be able to express my gratitude to the workers who cared for my mother and a disabled sibling. There is no salary high enough for them, IMO.

[jwirr]

16. I usually respect your post but on this one you are

dead wrong. The cost I figured included all costs as well as medications, etc. As to unions I totally support the union except when they are not working for the good of their clients and that is what was happening in this institution. I finally found out what was happening from a union member who worked 1-1 with my daughter. She caught me on the way out of the building when the staff had refused to let me see my daughter - because she was sick! Oh yeah, black and blue. I have never been refused entrance to a community based program. I am glad that the workers cared for your family - they did not care for mine. Am I just supposed to ignore that? Am I also supposed to ignore that my daughter was not the only one being abused? These people were hired to take good care of the clients we placed there and they were paid very good wages for that. They did not. I have been an advocate for this group since my daughter was diagnosed at the age of 10 months and I do not turn my back on them regardless of who is taking care of them.

All I am saying is that the use of lower educated persons does lower costs. The state sets the pay scale for all these workers in MN and it is not extremely low. They are usually contracted for services and we do not ask if they are union or not. We ask if they can provide the services. The doctors belong to the AMA, the RNs work for agencies and may and may not be union, the bath lady works for an agency and often is not union, the adult day services are a not-for-profit agency and also probably not union and the foster parents are a privately owned facility and all are supervised by the local county social workers (once upon a time that was me).

I really suggest that if you have not read Normalization that you do so. It is not about anti union. It is about normal lives for persons who heretofore have been placed into institutions often by the government without due process and forced to stay there because there were no alternatives. We - the parents - gave them alternatives. We gave them their freedom back. We gave them back to their families.

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. This is my field. I've read Normalization.

The bottom line is there are many profoundly disabled persons for whom an institution is the best placement. I've been to KNI. Some of the residents don't have families. Some families are unable to provide the level of care necessary. For example when my elderly mother needed 24 hour care we had no choice but to look for a residential facility. It was her most appropriate option.

Just because something works for you does not mean it will work for all. States need to provide a continuum of services to place each client in the best placement for them.

Regardless of our opinions however, it is a gross mischaracterization to refer to this institution as "a taxpayer draining piece of garbage".

[jwirr]

21. You will never convince me of that - I have watched the community

based movement for 55 years. And I was personally involved in bringing others like my daughter home for the institutions. And watching to see what happened to them after they got home. Yes, MN does a very good job of overseeing the care so it will vary from state to state. But I have yet to see one single case that did not do better out of the institutions than in. There are a lot of problems with institutional care - one of the biggest is medical care. As one of the people in charge of overseeing the institutions I found a lot of stereotyping of what a profoundly disabled person was supposed to be like. For instance a little problem like reflux - "oh, they all have that" was a common statement. My daughter had it to but we did not treat is as a symptom of developmental disability - we actually worked with local doctors who came up with a treatment that ended the reflux. When I took it to one of the staffings - the doctor at that institution tried it and I always smiled when they would tell me that they had solved that problem for one of our clients. No a doctor who treated it like a real disease solved it.

Just as an example of how things are better - my daughter was never outside the institution in the 6 months she was there - not even for a walk in her wheelchair. Today she gets up in the morning, is dressed and fed. She gets on a bus which she loves and is driven to a DAC (a center for adults) that acts both as a workshop and a activity center for adults. She does not take part in the workshop because it is unfeasible (cost to much for 1-1)but she does take part in the joy that is going on around her - there is always music, laughter, talking and people who include her in their activity. The bus brings her home in the afternoon and she participates in a normal family home life. She even helps to do the laundry (loves warm towels) and doing the dishes. Then the family and her foster sister might go for a walk, work in the garden, watch tv or something like that until it is bedtime. Of course she cannot participate totally in many of these activities but at the institution she never had the opportunity. She also goes to restaurants in the community, attends parades, church, goes shopping and attends all manner of community events. She also has special friends who have befriended her in the community. Visitors were often prohibited at the institution. My sister was visiting clear from Delaware and they refused to let her see her. She is profoundly disabled (as I said about 5 months) but that does not mean that she needs to be penned up somewhere for her own good. We do not pen our 5 month old children up. Who says it is for their good? The clients I see everyday would tell you that they do not agree. Some of our clients still ask when we have a staffing - "do I have to go back?" The institutions idea of normalization was taking their diapers off and putting them in age appropriate panties - when I brought her home they packed her clothes and offered me her shoes. I laughed and said no thanks - they smelled to high heaven of urine.

However, if you do not have small scale facilities in your state already and you have someone like Brownback then I agree with you because he is not going to give them what they need regardless where they live.

[MineralMan]

2. Scum!

That is all. That person is scum.

[bullwinkle428]

4. Neurological Institute = brain function. I love it when the GOP

displays their own brutal and naked honesty.

[yellowcanine]

5. "Michael Egan, a GOP precinct committeeman from Shawnee, confirmed authorship of the email ..."

Michael Egan sounds like a real advocate for life, as long as the lives are not born yet.

[madrchsod]

8. my wife will kick his ass..

she just finished 16 hrs working with profoundly disabled people...

[Pacifist Patriot]

11. Your last word says it all

people

[Bandit]

10. Sounds like it came straight out of the mouth of Jesus...

If Jesus had to spend any of his money helping sick people he couldn't buy all his ammunition for his assault weapons...:shrug:

[gratuitous]

12. It is to be expected

Republicans HATE tax dollars dedicated to programs and services they'll never use, and a so-called "neurological" institute is something they'll never need. How many steps do you suppose we are from a "final solution" proposal from the likes of Mr. Egan?

[jwirr]

13. You are right that they need care but here in MN we have closed

most (only one is still open, I think) of our institutions for the developmentally disabled clients and they are in community based services in the counties they were born in and where most have family still living in those counties. It works and it is cheaper.

However, with your rethug governor I would be worried also. He is not going to help set up that community based service and that will be disastrous.

As to some in diapers - my daughter is very similar to a child of 5 months - diapers and all. She was in an institution for 6 months and abused 6 times by another client - the staff did not even bother to let me know she was in the hospital each of those times. In fact the union at the institution helped to cover up that abuse that was not just happening to her. They were all afraid of an investigation into the institution. When I took her out I personally started the effort to close our MN institutions down and I will never be sorry. BUT I had Democratic governors and legislators working with me.

If he closes them it will have to be a local grassroots effort that builds the services. Beginning with the ARK and the parents who are already keeping their children home with them. That in fact is how this movement has always addressed the needs of their children. We started out in church basements and then to the schools and finally to other services. It has been an honor to be involved in making their lives more normal.

A very good read on this even today is a book called "Normalization".

[liberalhistorian]

17. Maybe he'd change his tune if a patient was named

Terry Schiavo. Yet more proof that the RW meltdown over her case was simply nothing more than plain political expediency and pandering, as well as failin' Palin's horse hockey over "death panels" (which, to me, is another name for private insurance companies, but that's another thread). Because the first thing these so-called "pro-life" fucks think of in these cases is money.

[yurbud]

18. I thought it meant studying for cures for neurological disorders, which would be a direct threat

to the size of the GOP voter base. Republicans are probably desperately trying to figure out how to get kids to eat more lead paint chips.

[proud2BlibKansan]

23. They need to build their base.

[hobbit709]

19. Maybe Mr. Egan should be studied to find out

how he has lived this long without any higher brain functions.

[sarcasmo]

22. They only care about life if it's in the womb. These people have zero morals.