I have spent five of the last seven working days

in Washington, DC. It’s a nice place to visit, but that’s too much like living there.

All this time in D.C., we (CDR, ADAPT, CCI – many hats) have been trying to push our political leaders to reform our nation’s broken long term care system. Honestly, we’ve been trying to get them to understand our concerns and act on them for nearly two decades, but recently I was actually starting to feel a little optimistic.

Why? Because now, healthcare reform is “all the rage.”

The President’s saying it, and once he has a CMS director they’ll probably come out with their plan. The Senate’s working on its plan. The House is working on its plan. It’s real focus on solving a real problem… my goodness, its how government should work!

Almost.

As we chased around Capital this week, it became more and more clear that not the President, nor the Senate, nor the House were actually planning on including long term care reform as part of their healthcare reforms. SAY WHAT!?

How can government seriously think that it’s O.K. to leave long term care out of healthcare reform? The answers varied: ‘it’s too complicated’, ‘there are too many opinions’, ‘it is too expensive’, ‘we just haven’t had time’, ‘we didn’t think about that’. All lousy excuses that could just as easily be applied to healthcare reform in general.

There’s a handful of representatives trying to raise the issue. Senator Rockefeller had a long term care hearing last week. He even called me up to the table to speak impromptu for two minutes. He and I spoke for another five minutes after the hearing. Senator Schumer has heard from advocates across N.Y. for many years that the Community Choice Act and community-based services are crucial, so his staff are trying to bring up the issue.

Other than that, it appears our elected representatives are shielding their eyes and pretending there’s “no elephant in the room.”

Well, frankly, pretending that there’s “no elephant” there doesn’t make it go away. More than likely, it allows the problem to get worse. Who knows what this elephant will be stepping on, sitting on, or well… other unspeakable things.

Senators and Representative and White House staff need to get busy tackling long term care reform as part of healthcare reform. Seniors and people with disabilities deserve just as much focus from our Government as the individuals who will benefit from the rest of a reformed healthcare system.

And we will not accept their failure to reform long term care.