Happy Valentine's Day from VOR! | | |
VOR's Weekly News Update
VOR is a national non-profit organization
run by families of people with I/DD and autism
for families of people with I/DD and autism.
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Registration is Open!
VOR's 2026 Legislative Initiative
June 8 - 10
Washington D.C.
We are proud to announce that we will be returning to Capitol Hill this June.
We have a limited number of hotel rooms avaialable, at the ridiculously low price of $178 per night for a single room, $269 per night for a double.
Please register for the initiative now to reserve your rooms.
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This is a critical year for our families.
Last year, Congress passed legislation that cut Medicaid by nearly
One Trillion Dollars.
They ignored our pleas for better wages and benefits for DSPs.
Their actions have cut the DSP workforce dramatically.
They have cut Special Education programs for people with I/DD and autism.
They have acted like we do not exist.
This year, we have to show up, stand up, and speak up.
We are the voice of our loved ones who cannot speak for themselves.
| | A Little More Help From Our Friends: | |
House Committee on Education and Workforce:
Work, Dignity, and Choice in Disability Employment
February 13, 2026
Members of the Coalition for the Preservation of Employment Choice, A-Teams, and other advocates for the preservation of 14(c) programs appeared before a field hearing of the House Committee on Education & Workforce, held by Representative Glenn Grothman at a Wisconsin Sheltered Workshop.
We encourage our members to watch and share this video, which features Kti Brewer, of the Coalition (and a member of VOR).
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From our friends at the Saving Wrentham and Hogan Alliance, we are happy to share the next installment in their five part series on the history of legal battles in Massachusetts.
This series, and the cost study, provide legal and financial insights that should be relevant to VOR families in every state. We encourage our folks to read these thoroughly, and if possible, to create similar studies showing conditions in your own states.
What the Rolland Lawsuit Reveals About Massachusetts’ Real Commitment to Community Living
Saving Wrentham and Hogan Alliance, February 13, 2026
Part One: MA Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Lawsuits
Massachusetts often describes itself as a national leader in community living for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). But the historical record shows something very different: the state expanded community services only when forced by federal courts, and only after years of failing to meet basic legal obligations.
No case exposes this gap between rhetoric and reality more clearly than Rolland v. Cellucci, a class‑action lawsuit on behalf of nearly 2,000 people with IDD living in nursing homes.
Preadmission Screening and Resident Review (PASRR)
Under the Nursing Home Reform Act (OBRA ’87), states must identify people with IDD entering or living in nursing homes, evaluate their needs, and provide specialized services — including:
Active Treatment, Skill Building Supports, Therapies, and Opportunities for Community Living...
Massachusetts wasn’t doing any of this.
Residents with IDD were placed in nursing homes because it was cheaper for the Department of Developmental Services and administratively easier, even though nursing homes were never designed to provide the services federal law required.
Continued
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If you haven't yet read the Saving Waltham and Hogan Alliance's ICF vs HCBS cost analysis, we encourage you to download it and read it now.
Please click here to download the cost comparison
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Special Education:
90% of student discrimination and harassment complaints were dismissed last year. Here’s why.
Students with disabilities and survivors of sexual misconduct can’t rely on the Department of Education — the target of budget cuts and staff reductions — to intervene for them, new reports find.
By Nadra Nittle, the 19th News, February 6, 2026
President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education has created a crisis that critics long feared: leaving marginalized students vulnerable to misconduct with little federal intervention. A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan arm of Congress, paints a damning picture of how mass layoffs and the slashing of resources at the agency have significantly impacted the civil rights of students.
The department’s chief responsibility is to ensure that all students have equal access to education. However, its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) dismissed roughly 90 percent of the more than 9,000 new complaints of discrimination based on race, sex, disability and age it received from March to September 2025, the GAO found. This has raised concerns that Trump’s Education Department is systemically refusing to investigate civil rights cases instead of reviewing their merits — abandoning the students it is tasked with protecting.
The fact that the agency shuttered seven of its 12 regional civil rights offices and placed half of OCR personnel — 299 out of 575 staffers — on administrative leave last year contributed to the dismissals of most complaints. They were prohibited from working while on leave, adding to the backlog of cases. The move was costly for the students who appealed to the agency for help and also for taxpayers since covering these employees’ salaries and benefits during their nearly nine months of leave amounted to as much as $38 million, according to the GAO.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who caucuses with Democrats and serves as ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, commissioned the GAO report. He criticized the department for wasting taxpayer dollars and preventing Office for Civil Rights staff from investigating claims. “That is unacceptable,” he said in a statement following the release of the findings.
“Every child in America should be able to get a good education no matter where they live, what their religious beliefs are or whether or not they have a disability,” he said.
The Education Department did not respond to The 19th’s request for comment about the report before publication.
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Altering IDEA Poses ‘Substantial Risk’ To Students With Disabilities, Advocates Warn
By Michelle Diament, Disability Scoop, February 9, 2026
Federal lawmakers are considering taking up legislation that would amend the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a move that disability advocates fear could open the door to broader changes amid an already tumultuous time for special education.
Advocates say they are alarmed that the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, known as HELP, is weighing whether to move forward on multiple bills that would amend the IDEA.
“Given the current climate and recent actions at the Department of Education that have raised serious concerns regarding enforcement, oversight, and civil rights protections, we believe reopening IDEA poses a substantial risk to students with disabilities and their families,” members of the Consortium for Constituents with Disabilities’ Education Task Force recently wrote in a letter to leaders of the Senate panel.
In particular, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who chairs the HELP committee, is keen to move forward with his 21st Century Dyslexia Act, a bipartisan bill that would classify dyslexia as its own category under IDEA, according to Delancy Allred, public policy manager at the Autism Society of America and a co-chair of the CCD Education Task Force. Other bills altering IDEA are up for consideration too, she said.
“We worry if this were to happen, other members of Congress would try to include other changes to IDEA through amendments of the bills,” Allred said.
The idea of opening up the landmark special education law to changes is coming at a particularly uncertain moment for programs serving students with disabilities. The Trump administration has cut special education and civil rights staff at the Department of Education and has made clear its intent to move special education oversight to a different federal agency.
With that in mind, advocates said this is not the time to move forward with any legislation that would reopen or amend IDEA.
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It’s The ‘Gold Standard’ In Autism Care. Why Are States Reining It In?
By Bram Sable-Smith and Andrew Jones, KFF Health News via Disability Scoop, February 10, 2026
Aubreigh Osborne has a new best friend.
Dressed in blue with a big ribbon in her blond curls, the 3-year-old sat in her mother’s lap carefully enunciating a classmate’s first name after hearing the words “best friend.” Just months ago, Gaile Osborne didn’t expect her adoptive daughter would make friends at school.
Diagnosed with autism at 14 months, Aubreigh Osborne started struggling to control outbursts and sometimes hurting herself. Her trouble with social interactions made her family reluctant to go out in public.
But last summer, they started applied behavior analysis therapy, commonly called ABA, which often is used to help people diagnosed with autism improve social interactions and communication. A tech comes to the family’s home five days a week to work with Aubreigh.
Since then, she has started preschool, begun eating more consistently, succeeded at toilet training, had a quiet, in-and-out grocery run with her mom, and made a best friend. All firsts.
“That’s what ABA is giving us: moments of normalcy,” Gaile Osborne said.
But in October, Aubreigh’s weekly therapy hours were abruptly halved from 30 to 15, a byproduct of her state’s effort to cut Medicaid spending.
Other families around the country have also recently had their access to the therapy challenged as state officials make deep cuts to Medicaid — the public health insurance that covers people with low incomes and disabilities. North Carolina attempted to cut payments to ABA providers by 10%. Nebraska cut payments by nearly 50% for some ABA providers. Payment reductions also are on the table in Colorado and Indiana, among other states.
Efforts to scale back come as state Medicaid programs have seen spending on the autism therapy balloon in recent years. Payments for the therapy in North Carolina, which were $122 million in fiscal year 2022, are projected to hit $639 million in fiscal 2026, a 423% increase. Nebraska saw a 1,700% jump in spending in recent years. Indiana saw a 2,800% rise.
Heightened awareness and diagnosis of autism means more families are seeking treatment for their children, which can range from 10 to 40 hours of services a week, according to Mariel Fernandez, vice president of government affairs at the Council of Autism Service Providers. The treatment is intensive: Comprehensive therapy can include 30-40 hours of direct treatment a week, while more focused therapy may still consist of 10-25 hours a week, according to guidelines released by the council.
It’s also a relatively recent coverage area for Medicaid. The federal government ordered states to cover autism treatments in 2014, but not all covered ABA, which Fernandez called the “gold standard,” until 2022.
State budget shortfalls and the nearly $1 trillion in looming Medicaid spending reductions from President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act have prompted state budget managers to trim the autism therapy and other growing line items in their Medicaid spending.
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Caregivers for the elderly could lose wage protections under Trump proposal
By Andea Hsu, WNYC, January 29, 2026
Caring for the elderly in America is costly — too costly for many people to afford.
Now, the Trump administration is attempting to tackle that problem by rolling back wage protections for more than 3 million workers who care for seniors and the disabled in their homes.
The Labor Department has proposed rescinding an Obama-era rule that extended coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act to home care workers. The 2013 rule granted them labor protections most other workers have had since 1938.
Those include the right to earn at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and overtime, paid at one-and-a-half times their regular rate when they work more than 40 hours a week. At the time, the Labor Department said the change would fulfill President Barack Obama's promise to "ensure that direct care workers receive a fair day's pay for a fair day's work."
The Trump administration says the rule has not produced the intended benefits and instead created problems, harming employers, workers and the families they serve.
Labor advocates counter that taking away wage protections will drive even more workers out of an industry that already sees annual turnover of about 80%.
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Marcus Autism Center to conduct largest study of autism spectrum behavior in US
From WSBTV News Staff, February 7, 2026
ATLANTA — The Marcus Autism Center announced it will conduct the largest study of behavior, brain and genomic biomarkers in children across the autism spectrum following a $21.9 million grant from the late Bernie Marcus and The Marcus Foundation.
The research will include 7,500 children from birth to 12 years of age. The study aims to better understand what causes autism severity and how to improve treatment responses in children with profound autism.
The center, a subsidiary of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, plans to use the study to identify biological and behavioral factors that can be modified to optimize treatment outcomes. The research goal is to develop new therapies and precision medicine interventions that can be integrated into standard-of-care services.
In the United States, more than 2.3 million children have autism spectrum disorder.
According to the center, more than a quarter of those children, approximately 620,000, have what’s known as profound autism.
Children with profound autism face significant challenges, including severe intellectual disabilities and limited or no verbal communication. These individuals often experience extreme difficulties with daily living skills and typically require around-the-clock care and support.
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Autism Diagnoses Surge Tenfold As Doctors Recognizing It More In Girls
By Study Finds Analysis, Reviewd by John Anderer, Research led by Caroline Fyfe (Karolinska Insitutet)
February 9, 2026
For decades, autism has been considered a condition that mostly affects boys. Now, research tracking nearly 3 million people in Sweden over 35 years reveals that supposed gender gap in early childhood might be partly an illusion created by when, not whether, girls get diagnosed.
Boys typically get their autism diagnosis around age 10 to 14. Girls? They peak five years later, between ages 15 and 19. And by the time people reach their twenties in Sweden, the numbers are approaching parity. Based on current trends, the researchers project the male-to-female ratio reached roughly equal levels by 2024. The long-standing assumption that autism is three to four times more common in males appears to reflect diagnostic timing more than actual prevalence.
Published in The BMJ, the study tracked 78,522 autism diagnoses from 1987 through 2022. What researchers found wasn’t just a shift in numbers, it was evidence that autism in females is systematically under-recognized during childhood.
The Chameleon Effect
It appears girls with autism may be better at hiding it. Researchers call this “camouflaging” or “masking,” or taking social cues from peers and mimicking their behavior to fit in. A girl who doesn’t naturally understand social rules might carefully study how other girls talk, gesture, and interact, then copy those patterns to avoid standing out.
This works reasonably well in elementary school, when social interactions are fairly straightforward. But adolescence changes everything. Friend groups become more complex. Subtle social hierarchies emerge. The unwritten rules multiply. And the exhausting effort of constantly pretending becomes harder to sustain.
That’s when the cracks start showing, but often not as “classic” autism traits. Instead, teenage girls show up in doctors’ offices with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, or burnout. And because they already have a psychiatric diagnosis, doctors may never think to look for autism underneath.
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On the other hand....
The Autism Epidemic Is a Myth
Most new cases reflect mild or no significant impairment. Moderate and severe cases have declined.
By Adam Omary, The CATO Institute, February 11, 2026
For years, public health debate has often fixated on a supposed rise in the prevalence of autism. Various culprits have been named, including the well-investigated but unsubstantiated claim that vaccines cause autism. More recently, additional risk factors have been proposed — many by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — including maternal Tylenol use, food dyes and additives, chemical manufacturing agents and other possible stressors affecting perinatal development. Concerns about autism have been spotlighted within the larger Make America Healthy Again movement, motivated by a well-founded alarm over the nation’s devastatingly high burden of chronic disease and psychiatric illness. But there is a bigger problem with the autism epidemic: It doesn’t exist.
Autism diagnoses have indeed risen dramatically in recent decades. However, diagnostic criteria can change even when the underlying health phenomenon remains unchanged. The most recently released Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on autism, published last April, revealed a five-fold increase in the prevalence of autism between 2000 and 2022, from 67 to 322 cases per 10,000 children.
But a large-scale study published in December, drawing on CDC data from 24,669 8‑year-olds across the country, found that this dramatic rise may be entirely driven by children with mild or no significant functional impairment. Between 2000 and 2016, there was a 464 percent increase in diagnoses among children with no significant functional impairment whatsoever. In fact, during the same time period, there was a 20 percent decrease in the prevalence of moderate or severe autism, from 15 to 12 cases per 10,000 children.
There is often a lag of several years before such epidemiological datasets are released, and years more for researchers to perform statistical analyses, publish the findings and enter public policy discussions. We do not yet have data more recent than 2016 breaking down symptoms by severity level while controlling for other psychological factors such as intellectual disability. However, it is likely that the 74 percent increase in cases reported between 2016 and 2022 will reflect a continuation of the previous problem of overrepresentation of children with mild symptoms and no significant functional impairment.
Despite that, some advocates support the narrative that autism is on the rise, because an ever-expanding “spectrum” that produces more diagnoses draws more attention and research funding — even if children’s underlying psychology remains unchanged.
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Last week, we printed a story on claims that Utah's Protection and Advocacy agency, the Utah Disability Law Center, is "anti-family' [ Read the article here ]
This week, we are following up on that story as it develops.
Senate oversight effort sparks debate over Utah Disability Law Center’s work
By Ethan Rauschkolb, KUER NewsFebruary 10, 2026
Republican State Sen. Todd Weiler and the Disability Law Center seem to be talking past each other.
Weiler said he wants more oversight for the protection and advocacy organization, so he’s taking a two-pronged approach. One is a resolution, SJR7, that seeks to turn the heat up on the center by instructing the governor to evaluate its work, and the second, SB154, would put guidelines in place for future reporting to the state.
Meanwhile, the Disability Law Center has defended its work, posting on Instagram in late January to urge its supporters to voice concerns over the resolution. The joint resolution asks Gov. Spencer Cox to evaluate the center’s performance over the past decades and determine if it still deserves the designation as a protection and advocacy agency.
Protection and advocacy agencies are private, nonprofit organizations that exist, per federal guidelines, to legally advocate for people with disabilities. They receive millions of dollars in federal grants to do so, though it’s up to individual states to decide which organization gets this title.
Utah’s Disability Law Center has been the state’s designee since 1978.
“It's been 48 years since they were designated,” Weiler said. “And I think a little bit of accountability is good for every organization that's receiving taxpayer money.”
His chief worry is that the Disability Law Center isn’t serving all disabled Utahns equally. Weiler said he’s heard complaints from families that the agency isn’t advocating for people with high needs and low functionality, and that his goal with the joint resolution is to give the agency a chance to refute these claims or commit to advocating for those groups.
He’s doing this, officially, by asking the governor to perform an in-depth review to identify whether or not it’s advocating correctly. And, if appropriate, to redesignate the protection and advocacy title to a different agency. Weiler said he thinks plenty of other institutions would be willing to take up the mantle, including Utah State University.
“I don't think competition is bad,” he said.
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Connecticut - Investigation Finds Lack Of Oversight When Disabled Students Sent Out Of State
By Viktoria Sundqvist, CT News Junkie, February 10, 2026
A lack of oversight, unexplained injuries, and practices inconsistent with state law were issues highlighted in a report released Tuesday as the result of a multi-year investigation into the widespread out-of-state placement of Connecticut students with disabilities.
The investigation was spearheaded by the nonprofit Disability Rights Connecticut (DRCT) and the Office of the Child Advocate (OCA), which are calling on the state legislature to take immediate corrective action to “eliminate the abuse and neglect of students at these schools,” saying, “Connecticut can, and should, do better.”
Local school districts can choose to place a student who has a disability in a private special education program based on the needs of that student. Parents can also choose to place a child in an out-of-state program and negotiate potential funding with a local district.
More than 200 Connecticut students with disabilities from 72 Connecticut school districts were placed in out-of-state schools across 15 states from 2021 to 2024, the period reviewed in the investigation, according to the report. Autism and emotional disabilities were the most common, and the majority of students placed out of state were white, the report notes.
Most students were placed in schools in neighboring states like Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island, but others were sent to Utah, Texas, and Oregon, according to the report.
The investigation revealed insufficient oversight and monitoring of students and schools, schools not approved or licensed by the state in which they operate, use of restraint and seclusion rooms that do not follow Connecticut law, and a number of excessive, unexplained student injuries.
“These injuries raise serious concerns about student safety and the adequacy of the services provided at these schools,” according to the report. “Unfortunately, abuse and neglect of students with disabilities are all too prevalent in our society.”
The report also noted that parents were not always notified of restraints, seclusions, or student injuries and that no formal complaint process exists for parents to report safety concerns.
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‘If we lose that, I will have to leave work’; Missouri Families worried as Governor proposes budget cuts for disability funding
By Parker Padgett, Ozarks First, February 12, 2026
“I don’t care whether you’re Republican or Democrat, if you think that cutting this program is a benefit to the families that you represent, you truly don’t have any idea what it is you’re voting on,” Dustin Atwood said.
Atwood and his wife Stacy have a daughter named Brinley.
Brinley uses at home care, paid for through the The Missouri Children with Developmental Disabilities Waiver (MOCDD), which according to the State Department of Social Services, is “also known as the Sarah Lopez Waiver” and “grants Medicaid eligibility to those children under the age of 18 who would be determined eligible for MO HealthNet if they were to reside in an institution, but whose families have chosen to have the child remain home. The MOCDD waiver permits the state to view only the child’s income when making eligibility determination. The Department of Mental Health, Division of Developmental Disabilities administers this program.”
“She has an additional 13th chromosome. So instead of X and Y pairs throughout your genetics, she has a third one and certain parts of her cells,” Dustin said.
“The first three years, the doctors told us that she wouldn’t walk, she wouldn’t crawl, she wouldn’t eat with her and she wasn’t gonna be able to run,” Stacy Atwood added.
They’ve used home care for several years and believe it’s vital to her growth and overall quality of life.
That’s why they were shocked to learn that Governor Kehoe’s proposed fiscal budget for 2027 includes suggested cuts to disability services, which could impact home care.
“I was a little surprised, but disappointed probably more than anything,” Dustin said. “It goes back to they just really don’t have a grasp of what it is and the impact that it’s truly going to have on hundreds, if not thousands of Missourians.”
“I’m concerned where they’re going to take the funding elsewhere as well, because I think to the emotion aspect of it, I felt like a lot of work that I’ve done for the past year was just basically hit in the face. I have met with Senator Schmitt’s office. I have met with Senator Hawley’s office,” Stacy Atwood said. “I have met with a few of our House representatives. I have met with our Senate team. I have met with some of the policymakers in the governor’s office.”
With both parents working full-time jobs, they’re considering their options if the budget were to be approved without the funding.
“We both work full-time. He works out of the home. I do work from the home, but I am on constant meetings. We have two caregivers, one that works the morning, one in the night, and they work Monday through Friday. We don’t use them after. We don’t use them on the weekend, and we strictly use them so we can get our work done,” Stacy said. “If we lose that, I will have to leave work.”
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Missouri families worry proposed $80.7 million cut will hobble disability care programs
Department of Mental Health Director Valerie Huhn told lawmakers that while the reductions would impact families, the spending reductions would preserve the state’s ability to offer these services
By Steph Quinn, The Missouri Independent, February 9, 2026
For Jessica Haynes, cooking with her 21-year-old son AJ is “the most amazing thing.”
When Jessica and AJ, who has autism, prepare a meal side by side in their Raytown home, Haynes told The Independent, “he gets to learn new skills, and we get to learn things right along with it.”
Jessica and her husband Scott can spend more quality time with AJ since he was approved a month ago for a state program that lets people with developmental disabilities or their families hire, train and manage their own care staff.
In addition to allowing Jessica to work and be compensated as AJ’s personal assistant, the program, self-directed supports, could enable the family to hire a “community specialist” to help AJ become more independent away from home.
“He is at the exact moment where he should be transitioning into adulthood and learning to live independently,” Haynes said.
But a proposed $80.7 million funding reduction of Missouri’s services for people with developmental disabilities would eliminate the “community specialist” option — and slash pay rates for families’ care staff by between 21% and 29%.
As advocates and families raised alarm that reduced pay would cause their staff to quit, Missouri Department of Mental Health Director Valerie Huhn testified last week to the Senate Appropriations Committee that the reduced rates for self-directed supports would still be higher than what many care staff in Missouri are earning.
Gov. Mike Kehoe’s funding recommendation would reduce pay rates for personal assistants to $26.04 per hour, from $36.76 for medically trained staff and $33 for other personal assistants.
The proposed budget would also reduce the rate paid to providers of structured group programs, called day habilitation, by a third, from $43.24 per hour in the current fiscal year to $28.83 next year.
Families and advocates say the programs are a lifeline allowing loved ones with developmental disabilities to live in their homes and participate in their communities, rather than costly institutional care.
While Huhn acknowledged that the cuts would impact families who use self-directed supports, she said that they would have to find a way to hire staff or come up with an alternative plan.
“The family hires and fires, so they will have to work through that,” Huhn said. “They today have the same challenges that everybody in this field has, including the state.”
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Colorado - Hours of tearful testimony result in pause to some Medicaid cuts for Coloradans with disabilities
By Jennifer Brown, The Colorado Sun, February 8, 2026
Colorado Medicaid officials are pausing a few proposed cuts that would have affected children and adults with severe disabilities who are cared for at home by family members after state lawmakers found the cuts too painful to support.
The proposals, which came as the state Medicaid program is trying to find tens of millions of dollars in cuts to help balance the budget, were to cap the number of hours family caregivers could bill for what is often round-the-clock medical care, and reduce their pay rate to match what is allowed for group homes.
After hours of tearful testimony, the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee refused to grant the requests, pushing them off until next year’s budget instead. The six-member bipartisan committee’s decision to deny and delay came after an 11-member citizen committee appointed by the governor, called the Colorado Medical Services Board, refused last month to even make a motion on a proposal for a rate cut for the state’s most vulnerable people.
“I understand we need to make cuts,” Elizabeth Moran, executive director of the Arc of Colorado and sister to a person with disabilities, told lawmakers last week. But cutting services for people who are living at home “is not saving money. It is just shifting costs over to more expensive systems. It pushes people into crisis. It will result in institutional care, institutions and beds that we don’t have, care staff that we don’t have. And in the process, cause real harm to Coloradans.”
The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, which includes the Medicaid division, began notifying case managers across the state that the actions to trim costs were now on hold. The news came as a relief to family caregivers, who for months have shown up for various hearings, sometimes pushing loved ones in wheelchairs, pleading with policymakers not to make the cuts. The fight is hardly over, though.
The whole process of trying to trim the Medicaid budget has felt unbearable at times for those forced to make the decisions.
Medicaid officials argue that they must change policies and rates for the long haul, otherwise the services are not sustainable. Spending on the federal-state insurance program for people with low incomes and disabilities now consumes one-third of the state budget, leaving less for other state necessities, including education and transportation. It would take $631 million to keep offering the same Medicaid programs next year, but the proposed budget includes less than half of that, or about $300 million.
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Budget cut fallout: After Idaho cut a critical Medicaid mental health service, two patients died
By: Kyle Pfannenstiel, The Idaho Capitol Sun, February 10, 2026 4:10 am
Two months after an Idaho Medicaid contractor cut critical mental health services, officials say the fallout that mental health providers warned about is becoming real.
Two patients died, and crisis centers and jails are strained after patients lost access to a program that brings mobile, specialized mental health care directly to people with severe illness, mental health providers say.
Across eastern Idaho, crisis centers are seeing demand spike after the cuts, which also ended peer support services that help people navigate mental health treatment.
Since the cuts, visits to eastern Idaho crisis centers rose 34% in December and 43% in January, compared to the same months a year earlier, said DeVere Hunt, the CEO of Badger, Inc., which runs crisis centers in the region.
“These are individuals that no longer probably have community services that were able to sustain them,” he said in an interview.
But some of the consequences of the cuts might be masked, providers say, because many mental health clinics are still providing some mobile treatment out of their own pockets.
“We’re getting reports from every county and every region in the state that hospitalizations are up, utilization of the crisis units is up, the jails are struggling to maintain, and that we’re getting increases in people being arrested and detained,” said Laura Scuri, who co-owns Access Behavioral Health Services in Boise and runs the region’s local team on the program that was cut, which is called Assertive Community Treatment, or ACT.
Republican lawmaker works to restore cut Medicaid mental health program
Idaho Medicaid contractor Magellan cut the service in December, after Idaho Gov. Brad Little ordered state agencies to cut spending to avoid a budget shortfall. The Idaho Sheriffs’ Association quickly warned that cutting the program would risk public safety, and providers said the cuts would drive up other costs even more.
But as the Idaho Legislature explores cutting state spending more to make room for tax cuts, a Republican state lawmaker from East Idaho plans to propose reinstating the program — and thinking more carefully about future cuts.
“I wish that we would step back and look at this as not so much cuts to balance a budget, but priorities of what to fund,” Rep. Ben Fuhriman, a Shelley Republican, said in an interview. “And we have a lot of things that we’re spending money on right now in our state that are good, noble. But then there’s a lot of things that we spend money in our state that I believe are directly under the purview of the purpose of government — protecting our citizens, public safety. Those are, in my opinion, one of the sole purposes government exists.”
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[Please click on blue link to view information about the bill]
VOR SUPPORTS:
H.R.6137 / S.3211 - Rep.Brian Fitzpatrick (R-NJ) and Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) - A bill to require the Office of Management and Budget to consider revising the Standard Occupational Classification system to establish a separate code for direct support professionals
H.R.4796 - Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA) - Restoring Essential Healthcare Act -To amend Public Law 119-21 (The One Big Beautiful Bill Act) to repeal the prohibition on making payments under the Medicaid program to certain entities.
H.R.4807 - Rep Greg Landsman (D-OH) - Protect Our Hospitals Act - To amend Public Law 119-21 to repeal certain changes to provider taxes under the Medicaid program.
H.R.1262 & S.932 - Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) "Give Kids A Chance Act" - To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to molecularly targeted pediatric cancer investigations. This bill would renew research into pediatric cancers and includes increasing funding for rare diseases, some of which cause Intellual and developmental disabilities and autism.
H.R.1509 & S.752 - Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA) & Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Accelerating Kids' Access to Care Act -
This bill would amend titles XIX and XXI of the Social Security Act to streamline the enrollment process for eligible out-of-state providers under Medicaid and CHIP, and streamline enrollment under the Medicaid program of certain providers across State lines.
H.R.2598 & S.1277 - Rep Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Sen Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) The IDEA Full Funding Act
To amend part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to provide full Federal funding of such part.
S.2279 - Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO)
A bill to repeal the changes to Medicaid State provider tax authority and State directed payments made by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and provide increased funding for the rural health transformation program.
H.R.1950 - Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) - Protect Social Security and Medicare Act
To protect benefits provided under Social Security, Medicare, and any other program of benefits administered by the Social Security Administration or the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
S.779 & H.R.1735 - Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) & Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX)
To amend title XIX of the Public Health Service Act to provide for prevention and early intervention services under the Block Grants for Community Mental Health Services program
H.R.2491 & S.1227 - Rep Kat Cammack (R-FL) & Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) - The ABC Act
To require the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Commissioner of Social Security to review and simplify the processes, procedures, forms, and communications for family caregivers to assist individuals in establishing eligibility for, enrolling in, and maintaining and utilizing coverage and benefits under the Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and Social Security programs
VOR OPPOSES:
H.R.2743 & S.1332 - Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) & Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Raise the Wage Act - A bill to provide increases to the Federal minimum wage and for other purposes. VOR opposes the provision in this bill that would phase out section 14(c) and sheltered workshops for indiviiduals with I/DD and autism.
S.2438 - Transformation to Competitive Employment Act (Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) - A bill to assist employers providing employment under special certificates issued under section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 in transforming their business and program models to models that support people with disabilities through competitive integrated employment, to phase out the use of such special certificates, and for other purposes.
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