LRS provides comments to CMS on rule defining home and community-based settings

The Ohio Legal Rights Service (LRS) today submitted comments to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on its recent proposed rule defining "home and community-based settings" for section 1915(c) home and community-based services waivers and section 1915(i) and 1915(k) state plan programs. The proposed rule states that home and community-based settings must exhibit certain characteristics to be deemed truly integrated for people with disabilities. LRS indicated its support for this part of the proposed rule, although it suggested modifications to strengthen the language and to ensure that people with disabilities have independent, autonomous lives in the community and a greater ability to choose the most integrated setting in which to reside.

The proposed rule also excludes certain types of institutional settings (nursing facilities, for example) but also creates merely a rebuttable presumption for other types of segregated settings. LRS opposed any rebuttable presumption for the latter, asserting that people with disabilities wish to live in their own homes and in settings in which people without disabilities reside and that segregated settings therefore should be categorically excluded under the definition of "home and community-based settings." Furthermore, legal obligations under the integration mandate of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act demand that states not maintain, develop, and expand non-integrated settings for people with disabilities.

Read the comments: LRS comments to CMS (PDF file)

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