PLS: Groups Urge Governor to Build the Consumer Workforce Council

By Jeff Cox, April 1st, 2009

Standing in a pouring rain behind the Main Capitol Building, people with disabilities, seniors and home care attendants joined several lawmakers in urging Governor Rendell to build the Consumer Workforce Council. According to advocates, the Council would be a board of home care consumers who would expand and protect home care through developing cost-effective solutions to bring home care attendants access to better wages and heath care benefits. They also claim the Council would create a voluntary registry to help match seniors and people with disabilities to qualified home care attendants and will protect home care consumers’ rights to fully manage their own long term care.

Ray Myers, vice president of the Pennsylvania Alliance for Retired Americans, argued the Consumer Workforce Council will "enable people within the system to fix the system." He said his organization is "counting on Governor Rendell to put the Consumer Workforce Council in place to fix the system so we seniors may remain in our homes as long as possible." Myers concluded by pleading, "Governor Rendell, please don’t let us down."

Rep. Peter Daley (D-Washington) told the crowd, "We want to save Pennsylvania taxpayers’ dollars but we want something we prefer, not something someone else prefers and the Consumer Workforce Council will do just that.” According to Rep. Daley, "the Pennsylvania long term care system is headed towards financial disaster."  He said 80% of the cost for long term care dollars is for "expensive nursing home care" and "only 20% for cost effective home care." He added, "I want to be home, you want to be home, we all want to be home." Rep. Daley argued, "The Consumer Workforce Council will stabilize the workforce so our brothers and our sisters, our parents and grandparents will have safe reliable care."

Rep. Jennifer Mann (D-Lehigh), Secretary of the Democratic Caucus, said, "You all deserve continuity of care and you all deserve to know the person coming in your door and that person needs to know what you need from them." She announced, "I want you to know that I stand here on behalf of the leadership of the Democratic caucus and we are committed to making this change in how our health care is delivered to our seniors and to our disabled throughout Pennsylvania."

Rep. Dan Frankel (D-Allegheny) told the rally that he and many of his colleagues in the House "have been working with you to try to get fair treatment for the folks who provide the care to our disabled and to our elderly throughout the Commonwealth." He said, "It has been a struggle but we need to continue to focus on the Consumer Workforce Council to certainly be part of the solution." According to Rep. Frankel, "If you are going to have great caretakers, we have to pay them well, we have to give them health insurance and they need to be taken care of." He added, "This Consumer Workforce Council is going to be one of the ways we get that done."

Rep. Marc Gergely (D-Allegheny) said the people in his legislative district "want to be home for safe, good, ethical care and they don’t want to be in a nursing home." He added, "We need to establish the Consumer Workforce Council." Rep. Gergely also told the crowd, "As the acting chair of the Labor Relations Committee, we are going to move this through and continue the discussion to protect the consumers and the advocates that we all stand for." He concluded, "Believe in this, we stand ready to move forward on this and we won’t let you down!"

Air Force Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) and veterans’ health advocate Hal Donahue offered support for the establishment of the council and said it will "provide the means to help the veteran, the home care worker and all the families to cope with their wounds of war and the passage of time."

Other groups participating in the rally and offering support for the creation of the Council included representatives for AARP, Liberty Resources and TRIPIL Services.