What's New/News:                                                Vol. 2, Issue 12

ADVOCACY NEWS

Insurance and HMOs

A reader wrote that she had a child born with multiple disabilities. Her child needed a pulmonologist, a lung specialist. Her current specialist was leaving the HMO and there was not another on the HMO list. She was afraid that the HMO would not provide the needed specialist.  Readers, your HMO must provide any needed specialist the primary care physician indicates a patient needs. The HMO must make arrangements, at their expense, for the specialist whether or not that specialty is on the HMO list or out of their network. HMO's provide that information in their policies. They refer you to the Texas Administrative Code 11.0506.15. I suggest anyone needing a copy of that law request it from your insurance company or locate it on the Internet. The Texas Department of Insurance has a website (http://www.tdi.state.tx.us), but I could not find the provision for out of network specialists on their website. If one of you finds it, please let me know. I have an inquiry addressed to the Secretary of State. I will let you know what I find out.  Complaints against the insurance company should be addressed to:

Complaints must be in writing, and the Texas Department of Insurance will send you a complaint form upon request.

ADD/ADHD and Test Accommodations

Another inquiry came to me this month from a friend. This friend was seeking assistance for an individual with Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD). These disorders are characterized by the inability to concentrate and fidgety behavior that can be controlled to some extent by medications. The only problem is that this particular individual with this disorder wants to apply to law school. She requires some reasonable accommodations to take the entry examination, the LSAT. However the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) has declined her request to have reasonable accommodations made despite her providing them with records from her doctors (including a psychiatrist), a letter from her undergraduate university that allowed her the accommodations the student needed and the completed forms that the LSAC demanded.

This student wanted to sue the LSAC under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Title 3, Section 309 which states that any private organization that administers examinations for future education or licensing must abide by the ADA guidelines. This student needs $15 - 20,000 in order to sue. The Department of Justice has already filed suit against the LSAC for disability discrimination but that case deals with physical disabilities. Although the student could probably use that case as a precedent, I do not believe that she wants to wait that long. 

My suggestions included contacting her State representatives, the governor, advocacy organizations in her State and trying to become part of the law suit already in progress. I am open for other suggestions and thoughts on this matter. Please send me any that you have. Thanks.

Reading Suggestions for the Year 2000

1. A Guide to Legal Rights for People With Disabilities, Marc. D. Stolman
2. A Wide and Capable Revenge, Thomas McCall
3. Advancing Your Citizenship: Essays on Consumer Involvement of the Handicapped, Philip L. Browning
4. Bad-Mouthing: The Language of Special Needs, Jenny Corbett
5. Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationship, Carol Gilligan
6. Beyond Disability: Towards an Enabling Society, Gerald Hales
7. Building Community: A Manual Exploring Issues of Women and Disability, Education Equity Concepts
8. Challenges of Emerging Leadership: Community Based Independent Living Programs and the Disability Rights Movement, Inst Educational Leadership
9. Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity, Simi Linton
10. Confronting the Stigma in Their Lives, James R. Dudley
11. Deaf and Disabled or Deafness Disabled: Towards a Human Rights Perspective, Mairian Corker
12. Deaf Empowerment: Emergence, Struggle and Rhetoric, Katherine A. Jankowski
13. Disability Rights Guide, Charles D. Goldman
14. Disability, Liberation and Development, Peter Coleridge
15. Disabled People As Second Class Citizens, Eisenburg
16. Disabled We Stand, Allan T. Sutherland
17. Disabled, Female, and Proud!: Stories of Ten Women With Disabilities, Harilyn Rousso
18. Disabling Barrers – Enabling Environments, John Swain
19. Disabling Laws, Enabling Acts: Disability Rights in Britain and America, Caroline   Gooding
20. Dispelling the Shadows of Neglect: A Survey on Women with Disabilities in Six Asian and Pacific Countries, ILO
21. Educational Rights of Children With Disabilities: A Primer for Advocates, Eileen L. Ordover
22. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness and the Body, Lennard J. Davis
23. Equal Access: Safeguarding Disability Rights, Gregory J. Walters
24. Equal Opportunities and Social Policy: Issues of Gender, Race, and Disabillity, Barbara Bagilhole
25. From Good Will to Civil Rights: Transforming Federal Disability Policy, Richard K. Scotch
26. Home at Last: How Two Young Women With Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities Achieved Their Own Home, Pat Fitton
27. Imprinting Our Image: An International Anthology by Women With Disabilities, Diane Driedger and Susan G. Dueck, Editors
28. In Search of Freedom: How Persons With Disabilities Have Been Disenfranchised from the Mainstream of Society, Willie V. Bryan
29. Include Me In: Disability, Rights and the Law in Queensland, Jennifer Fitzgerald
30. Living Outside Inside: A Disabled Woman's Experience Towards a Social and Political Perspective, Susan Hannaford
31. Modernism and Disability, Wolf Wofensberger
32. No Pity: People With Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement, Joseph Shapiro
33. Nothing About Us Without Us: The Dialectics of Disability Oppression and Empowerment, James I. Charlton
34. Pride Against Prejudice: Transforming Attitudes to Disability, Jenny Morris
35. Reaching the Hidden Majority: A Leader's Guide to Career Preparation for Disabled Women and Girls, Mary Hopkins-Best
36. The Abc-Clio Companion to the Disability Rights Movement, Fred Pelka
37. The Disability Rights Movement (Cornerstones of Freedom), Deborah Kent
38. The Disabled (Current Controversies), Brenda Stalcup, Editor
39. The Politics of Disablement: A Sociological Approach, Michael Oliver
40. The Quiet Revolution: The Struggle for the Rights of Disabled Americans, James Haskins
41. The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability, Susan Wendell
42. The Right to Have Enough Money: A Straightforward Guide to the Disability Income System in Canada, June Callwood
43. The Women's Health and Aging Study: Health and Social Characteristics of Older Women with Disability, Jack M. Gurelmik
44. Vocational Rehabilitation for Women with Disabilities, Sheila Stace
45. With the Power of Each Breath: A Disabled Women's Anthology, Susan E. Browne
46. Women and Disability (Women and World Development Series), Esther R. Boylan
47. Women and Disability: The Double Handicap, Mary Jo Deegan and Nancy A. Brooks, Editors
48. Women with Disabilities, Harilyn Rousso
49. Women With Disabilities: Essays in Psychology, Culture and Politics, Michelle Fine and Adrienne Asch, Editors
50. Women With Disabilities: Found Voices, Mary E. Willmuth, Lillian Holcomb

Karen Seal

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