{"id":3271,"date":"2012-05-01T19:43:47","date_gmt":"2012-05-02T00:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=3271"},"modified":"2012-05-01T19:43:47","modified_gmt":"2012-05-02T00:43:47","slug":"advocacy-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=3271","title":{"rendered":"Advocacy Works"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago, I wrote about the plight of <a href=\"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=3129\">Charles Van Heuveln<\/a>, a man with a physical disability who had worked for many years as a school aide. He was being forced into retirement and poverty because Minnesota&#8217;s Medicaid buy-in program (Medical Assistance for Employed Persons with Disabilities) was not available to anyone over age 65. His story earned a lot of local media attention and it served as a catalyst for legislative efforts to change the law. Yesterday, Governor Dayton <a href=\"http:\/\/www.minnpost.com\/politics-policy\/2012\/04\/dayton%E2%80%99s-hhs-bill-signing-becomes-bipartisan-celebration\">signed a human services bill<\/a> that includes provisions allowing workers with disabilities to remain on the buy-in past age 65 if they choose to keep working. Another provision allows workers with disabilities to keep their retirement savings once they do stop working.<\/p>\n<p>Congratulations to all the advocates&#8211;including Van Heuveln&#8211;and legislators who worked together to pass this legislation. Little by little, workers with disabilities are beginning to enjoy the same benefits of working as their able-bodied counterparts. I look forward to the day when I can retire without worrying about losing my nest egg.<\/p>\n<p>This post is part of <a href=\"http:\/\/blobolobolob.blogspot.com\/2012\/05\/blogging-against-disablism-day-2012.html\">Blogging against Disablism Day<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago, I wrote about the plight of Charles Van Heuveln, a man with a physical disability who had worked for many years as a school aide. He was being forced into retirement and poverty because Minnesota&#8217;s Medicaid buy-in program (Medical Assistance for Employed Persons with Disabilities) was not available to anyone over <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=3271' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disability","category-wonkery","category-14-id","category-15-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-QL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3271"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3273,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271\/revisions\/3273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}