Jennifer Mathis, Deputy Director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health

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Hey everyone, welcome to the show. This is Joyce Bender, Disability Matters on Voice America. Joycemitchell.com. So it's so great, uh, just knowing I have all of you that follow this show. Uh, you know, that's what keeps this show going. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And to all of my friends around the world, you know, not that long ago I read the list and I had to stop going because it was so long. But Germany, England, even Kazakhstan has good listeners. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And I just had contact with my good friend Yoshiko. Yoshiko Dart. This is Disability Pride Month. Which I know you're all about that, Yoshiko. And I love you. We all love you. So special shout out to you. And hi, Mark. Oh, what a great company there. They have supported me and continue to support me and employ people with disabilities, and they are the sponsor of this radio show. So thank you all so much. Well, Guess what? You know, Mathis on the Mic? You all know Mathis on the Mic, Jennifer Mathis. But today we are so thrilled we don't have her just at the news break. We have Mathis on the Mic like Rachel Maddow for 1 hour. And you know what? I love Jennifer so much. And I have known her for years. She was always my go-to person when I had any question related to the mental health area. So she is at Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the deputy director. And, you know, I have Mathis on the mic, but we don't get to talk about you. So let's talk about you, Jennifer. Like, where did you grow up? What made you want to be an attorney? How did you become a disability advocate? Let's hear your story.

Sure. So happy to be here. Thank you for having me on. And I, gosh, I am from New York. I grew up in Queens. And how did I get into disability law? Well, I, um, I think a few different things led me into disability law. I always wanted to do some type of public interest law, and when I was in college, I actually, I studied history of science and within that, the American eugenics movement and all of the sort of false science that happened for many years that really perpetrated a lot of harm on many people, including people with disabilities. And so I got interested that way. I also developed my own disability. I have anxiety disorder and developed that at some point, like, actually in the course of my career, and so now identify as a person with a disability. But when I was in law school, I worked with Chai Feldblum. She was my law professor, one of my law professors. And at that time, the ADA had just recently passed, and I was a research assistant for Chai, and we got all kinds of really fascinating questions that were coming in at the time about what the ADA meant. And ironically, some of those questions are still, I think, questions that people are asking today, um, which is pretty interesting. I remember somebody calling and saying, well, what about the Javits-Wagner-O'Day Act that allowed for subminimum wages? And, you know, uh, what happens there with— now that you have the ADA? So very interesting observations and questions that people are still talking about now. And one of my early jobs out of law school was working at a protection and advocacy system in Pennsylvania. I worked at what was then called the Disabilities Law Project. And so I got some great exposure and a lot of motivation to make a career out of disability rights law. I think once I started there, um, I knew very quickly that this was going to be what I spent my life doing. And one of the earliest matters that I got involved in when I was there involved a person with an intellectual disability who had been institutionalized for all of his adult life. I think for— he was in his 40s and he was institutionalized, I think when he was a teenager. And he was nonverbal. He was in a state institution and his family very much wanted to bring him home. But they couldn't get Medicaid home and community-based waiver services. And at that time, there was no real process to apply for waiver services. States just decided, you know, who— how they were going to allocate the services. And so we had brought a Medicaid fair hearing. We had requested a Medicaid fair hearing for him and I went in there as this young sort of novice and wrote briefs where nobody wrote briefs before and made these legal arguments. And we actually won this fair hearing.

Oh, great.

Able to get this young man, not so young, but this man in his 40s, Home and Community-Based Services, and everybody around the table at the hearing was in tears when we had left the hearing, so I knew we were gonna win, or I thought we were gonna win, including the hearing officer being in tears. I remember the state raising some questions about how he, how his family knew that he actually wanted to live in the community because he was nonverbal. And I think it was just one of the most compelling moments that I witnessed where they talked about, you know, how he acted and what happened when, whenever they left, when he or when he went back to the institution or he left, that he would cry and he would hold on to them. Hug them, and, you know, they knew they didn't need him to speak in words, and that, you know, it was very, very clear how deeply he wanted to be with them and to live in the community. And so after that, I wasn't going back, and I knew that that was what I wanted to do. And that I sometimes think about as my first, as some people call it, my first liberation. And that led to a long career in doing community integration work and lots of other ADA work. And at the Pennsylvania P&A at the time, this was before the Supreme Court's Olmstead decision. They were bringing the early cases around community integration and the ADA, and they had brought a case called Helen L. that where they won a really, I think, one of the early decisions before Olmsted. It was sort of Olmsted before Olmsted. And they had won a case around several people who were unnecessarily institutionalized and got the federal court and the appeals court to say that the ADA prohibited unnecessary institutionalization and these people had to get community services because they were able to live in the community and they wanted to. And then we brought a big systemic case around people who were stuck in Harrisburg State Hospital who wanted to live in the community. And so that was really, my introduction. And I think from there I ended up coming back to D.C. at some point and pretty quickly ended up at the Bazelon Center. That was in 1999. And so I've been here at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law since January of '99. With two stints in the federal government. During the Obama administration, I went to the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, because Chai Feldblum had been appointed as a commissioner, and we were going to do the regulations under the ADA Amendments Act. So I went there to work on those regulations with Chai. And did the regulations under ADA amendments and also the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. Then came back to Bazelon. And then during the last administration, during the Biden administration, was appointed to serve in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General, really supervising most of the disability rights work at DOJ. And served in that role until January 20th of this year and then came back to the Baselon Center. So that's my story.

And we're lucky to have you. Before, before I talk about my next question, that means you were in your position in 1999 when I received the President's Award at the White House, because I received the award June of 1999. So what about that? We really have a history here, uh, Jennifer. Now I'm gonna have some questions for you that people want answers to, but, uh, before we do that, how about telling everyone what is the Baselon Center and why was it started? And then also, what is your role there?

Sure. So the Bazelon Center is a national organization. It's a nonprofit, and we do both legal advocacy as well as policy advocacy. We do a lot of systemic litigation, really focused in in large part on changing state mental health service systems to comply with the ADA's integration mandate to ensure that people with mental health disabilities are able to get the services they need in their own homes and communities and not have to be institutionalized. And most people don't want to be institutionalized and would rather be served in the community. And so that's a lot of what we do. We do some work around kids with disabilities in schools. We have done really all kinds of ADA work. We do a lot of— we have a lot of involvement in cases in the Supreme Court when the ADA cases end up going up. We have done a lot of amicus briefs and worked with the parties, often with the plaintiff's lawyers, to help prepare them for Supreme Court arguments. With the Olmstead case, when that went to the Supreme Court, we really did We were sort of the lead coordinator of that. We recruited the lawyer who represented Lois and Elaine in the Supreme Court in that case, the plaintiffs. We coordinated the amicus strategy in that case and really worked closely as sort of with the lawyers were working closely with the grassroots advocates on the strategy in that case, which was which was really interesting and a good story in itself. But we started more than 50 years ago. We started as the Mental Health Law Project in 1972. Wow. And one of the founders, in fact, was Pat Wald, who later became the chief judge on the D.C., the Federal Court of Appeals in D.C. And It was renamed at some point in the 1990s after Judge Bazelon, who had played a significant role in the development of mental health law. So it was founded by people, some people also who had been involved with the ACLU. I like to think of it as sort of a bit of an ACLU spinoff.

Wow. Yeah, I was at the 50th anniversary and I wear my pin. Proudly. For those of you that don't know, um, and I hope you do know from me talking about it, but I am so honored to be on the board of Baselon. I am so honored. It's such a great organization, and I feel it is nationally the organization for mental health law and discrepancy and discrimination and policy. It is, it is. So www.basilon.org. Basilon, B as in boy, A, Z as in zebra, B-A-Z-E-L as in Larry, O-N as in Nancy. B-A-Z-E-L-O-N. Gotta go look at it. You've gotta go. And by the way, when you go and you look at it, make a donation. Never too small. Never too small. But I'll bet you, if you don't have a mental health disability, you know someone that does. So don't just think about it. Make a donation. Help support. No matter who the nonprofit is, it's really like a for-profit company in that you have to make money in order to exist. So please, please do that. And then Jennifer, as you mentioned, You, uh, were a Biden appointee, but first, as other people, listeners, have asked me, what do you do at Bazelon?

So I do a little of everything, um, but I spend a chunk of my time doing litigation. So as I mentioned, we We do a lot of systemic litigation. A lot of that is Olmstead work. So, for example, we've had a number of cases we've brought over the years involving states that have served people with mental health disabilities largely in institutional settings, or even if, you know, they have a lot of people in the community, they're still significant numbers of people, usually in these cases there are thousands of people, um, with mental health disabilities who have only been offered, uh, services in an institutional setting. That's the only way that they can get, uh, served by the state mental health system. And so in some states it has been people in nursing homes, In some states it has been people in psychiatric hospitals. In some states it has been people in these, uh, sometimes they're called adult homes, sometimes they're called residential care facilities, but sometimes they're called boarding care homes, some version of, um, a place that is basically providing, um, you know, not a nursing home level of care, not a hospital level of care, mainly just sometimes people call it eats and sheets, you know, custodial care, and people are getting some mental health services usually from the outside. And there are a lot of people who have ended up stuck in those settings, and sometimes states have called those settings the community, even when they might be housing 100 or 200 or 300 people with mental illnesses in one place, which we call an institution. So that's been a lot of the litigation-related work that I have. We, we spend a lot of our time, frankly, in implementation of settlement agreements. So or consent decrees, often I say that when you litigate a case and you settle it, that that's when the real work begins because those cases go on. You don't just declare victory and move on. That's when you begin working with the state to actually make a reality the things that they have agreed to. And we spend years doing that. And one of the things that I like about the Bazelon Center is I think that when you litigate cases and you spend a lot of time really in the weeds with states and local governments and figuring out how to implement the requirements of the ADA, how to overcome barriers, how to ensure that people can get served in the most integrated setting, how to ensure that people have meaningful choice, and how to ensure that, you know, people can get housing and people can get what they need and that it really is truly integrated. That, that really informs the policy work that we do. So in addition to litigation, we do policy and I supervise our policy work in addition to doing a lot of the litigation. And I think it gives you a much better perspective on, you know, what is important and what is necessary when, you know, for policy purposes, when you're talking to agencies and you're talking to Congress when you have seen it on the ground and you have spent a lot of years in service systems making things work. So we do a combination of litigation and policy and, you know, some public education trainings, presentations, etc.

So, and I, I am happy to do this because I feel not a large portion of people know about Basilon. You know, what is Basilon? And everyone needs to know what is Basilon. I want to remind you again, Jennifer is my newscaster on the half hour, Mathis on the mic. But today, what a treat, you have her the entire hour. And I have to tell you, uh, Jennifer, something we're going to start doing is if people have a question, they can email to me ahead of time and then give it to you. Uh, so here we go. We do have a question, and that is, if I am in a nursing home on Medicaid What's going to happen to me?

That's a really good question because as we have talked about on the news segments of this show, Congress just passed this, this bill that they call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Many of us think it is anything but beautiful, and people have called it the one big ugly bill or things like that because it will— it is projected to result in about 12 million people losing their health insurance, mostly Medicaid coverage. And another 5 million people losing health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, um, by Congress's failure to extend those healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. So, um, many people are going to lose their Medicaid coverage. Um, a lot of that is related to work requirements. Um, maybe we can talk about that in more detail in a little bit. Um, but I will say that there are exemptions from the work requirements, and, uh, I think they are not supposed to apply to people, um, who are in nursing homes. Um, So that is helpful. Of course, the idea behind work requirements is that people have to keep reporting. Every month they have to report, and a lot of people are going to lose their Medicaid coverage, as we saw people do when we did see states imposing Medicaid work requirements in the past, not because they're not working, but because of the burdens of constant paperwork to keep proving over and over and over again that you are eligible and that you are meeting the work requirements or that you are exempt from the work requirements. And so, um, that was the problem, and that will be the problem again that it will be very difficult, I think, for many people to keep up with these constant paperwork requirements. And so many people lose coverage because of that. I think that because nursing homes don't get paid when people they're serving are not on the Medicaid rolls, it's in nursing homes' interests to help people. And so I think that people who are in a nursing home are more likely to get help from somebody to stay on Medicaid, to help with the documentation that they have to keep providing every month. So I would hope that that person is going to get help from the facility to keep that person on the Medicaid rolls. What I fear is a lot of people in the community are not going to get that help, and they should get it, need it.

Now, are you meaning then people in skilled nursing will not be required to have those work requirements? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, there's a couple of exceptions. There's exceptions for people who, who have a disability. Let me see if I can pull up the language. But I think if you have an intellectual disability or physical disability or a disabling mental disorder, I believe is the language, they use for those 3 categories. And they have defined that in certain ways. I think that if you are— if you meet the standard to be in a nursing home, you would meet this test. So you should be exempt for that reason. I think they also carved out some exemptions for people who are in facilities like that. And so you should be exempt from the work requirement for those reasons. But again, the issue is not so much are people working or are they exempt. We already know that most people on Medicaid are either working already or would be exempt from these work requirements. But the problem has been the paperwork and, you know, reporting constantly. Producing the right documentation in the right form and being able to get to a computer or being able to get somebody on the phone. And that has been the difficulty. So I think, you know, people in a nursing home, I think, are more likely than many other people to get help because they'll get people at the facility helping them because that facility wants to get paid. Through Medicaid.

Yeah, I can see that. Jennifer, one thing I would like to talk about a little bit is about how mental health is part of disability and problems with seeing mental health as separate from disability, including having a separate awareness month, you know, May instead of July, like, as you know, we're celebrating Disability Pride Month. Can you talk about that for a few minutes?

Yeah, and that is something that always strikes me as really problematic. And every May and every July, I think about this because every May We see people celebrating May as Mental Health Month, and many of those people do not think about people with mental health disabilities in July. To me, I celebrate July as Disability Pride Month, and I think about people with mental health disabilities as people with disabilities, and they are covered by the ADA, they are are covered by Section 504, they are covered by all the disability rights laws, and I think it is just a very different message that comes through in May on Mental Health Month than in July on Disability Pride Month. In July, people celebrate independence, autonomy, Dignity, um, integration, inclusion, equal opportunity, all the goals of the ADA, self-determination, um, and I think the disability rights movement is all about those goals, um, enabling people with disabilities to have equal opportunity, to live independently, to be included, to be full participants in society, to to be in regular classrooms alongside non-disabled peers, to live in their own homes and communities, and to work, and to have fair housing and equal opportunity at work, and all of those things. And Mental Health Month seems to have a much more limited vision of people with mental health disabilities, which is not about autonomy, dignity, inclusion, choice, integration. It seems to be about— sometimes people call it meds and beds. You know, the people need to be getting treatment and not enough people are getting treatment. And that is fair that, you know, not enough people are able to get the services they need. That's true for people with disabilities writ large, but that is not the entirety of people's lives. You know, the message about mental health should not be all about, you know, how many people are getting treatment and how many people are not getting treatment. The message should be about people's lives and that people people with mental health disabilities should have the same kind of life as people without disabilities, as anybody else, and, you know, should be able to live in their own home and community and make their own decisions and to have a job and to have housing and all of the things that people with disabilities want. I think it is just striking if you start paying attention to the difference in the vision for people with disabilities that is communicated by the disability rights movement and the vision for people with mental health disabilities, which is communicated often by much of the mental health world, which is just a much more limited vision of, "We'll reduce your symptoms," rather than, "We'll make sure that you have a life." And so I think that really it is important to think about mental health and to consider mental health policy in— as part of disability policy. And people with mental health disabilities should have the same kinds of goals, and we should have the same kinds of goals for them as the disability rights movement. Has for people with disabilities generally, and not to have this much more limited vision that what we want to do is just reduce people's symptoms and not worry about their living options and their work and their choices and their dignity and their autonomy and all of that. So I have found it interesting, I think one of the recent elections During the primary season, there were a bunch of Democratic candidates who all came out with disability plans as well as mental health plans, and the difference between those plans was so striking to me because, again, the disability plans seemed to reflect this vision that the disability community has advocated for of inclusion and rights and autonomy and self-determination. And the mental health plans tended to be about expanding institutional care, expanding forced treatment against people's will, and, you know, again, just primarily focusing on people as patients and not as people. And so I— it just really crystallized it for me at that time, how, how different these visions were. And so I always say, let's get rid of May's Mental Health Month and let's just celebrate July.

Yeah, you know what I would call, uh, May? Poster month.

Yes, exactly.

Poster month. Everywhere you look, like especially social media. It's all these posters and awareness, but that doesn't cut it with employment or really discrimination across the board. It doesn't even talk about any of that. And I always say, you know, paychecks, not pity. But I also would say Paychecks, not posters. You know what I mean? So I know exactly what you mean. And you know, the stigma around various disabilities include mental health disabilities.

Yes.

And, and there are, like all of you at Bazelon and Eve Hill and Andy Imperato, disability rights advocates. That you hear out there talking in July that have mental health disabilities. So I agree with you, I am all in. I think that is so true. Um, and then another question that is here is, Jennifer, when will this happen to me? Will I be kicked off Or does this go in steps?

So it does go in some steps. I think with the work requirements, which is probably the most significant restriction— there's a lot of restrictions in Medicaid that will be enacted, but those requirements states are supposed to have in place by the beginning of 2027. So they have a little bit of time to set up systems because right now most of them don't even have a system for trying to implement that type of requirement and having people report and communicating to people that they need to do this. And so that's when those will go into effect. And then beyond that, there are more frequent redeterminations that are supposed to happen. So right now, there are periodic redeterminations. I think it's supposed to be not more than once a year right now that states can implement so that they you know, revisit periodically people's eligibility for Medicaid to make sure that they are still eligible. With this new law, they will have to do redeterminations at least every 6 months. That means they will be going back a lot more frequently to keep asking people to produce new documentation all over again that they are eligible to prove it again and again. And I believe there were a lot of changes at the last minute in this bill, so it was a little hard to keep track of all of these moving pieces. But I believe that the— let's see, the redetermination requirements I'm not sure, it's either 2027 or 2028, I think. 2020— nope, 2026, actually. So, um, that starts pretty quickly. So I think, you know, those things will happen. Um, the redeterminations will happen, um, you know, more, more frequently, starting pretty quickly. The work requirements will kick in in a year. It's important for people to, if they need help, to ask for help. You know, try to contact the independent living centers, contact the protection and advocacy agencies, you know, places that are there to help people with disabilities because people are going to need, I think, some help in keeping up with all of the paperwork. And let's hope that there will be a new Congress at some point soon that will reverse some of these things. But right now, I think once these things start kicking in, people will need help. And we will all need to mobilize to make sure that people can get help. And also, we all need to be advocating with states that they need to provide people with help as well before they kick people off the rolls.

That was a question. What can we do? Is there anything we can do to change this?

Yeah, so that's a great question. And I think there are several things that we should focus on. One is that people will need accommodations in some cases. And so it's going to be important that states— that we demand that states accommodate people with disabilities. They provide reasonable modifications. That's required by the ADA, by Section 504. So that may mean if people need some help because of a disability navigating a process, then they need to do that. So if somebody isn't able to use the computer, they need to talk to that person by phone. They may need to provide people, uh, you know, more staffing, more help. I know that's going to be hard right now because states are taking a very big hit in their Medicaid systems because because they're losing a lot of federal money, but that's their obligation under the ADA, so, um, they need to ensure that people are not discriminated against based on their disability and that they get accommodations. So that's one thing. I think another thing is it's gonna be very important for disability advocates to make sure they are advocating with states not to cut community services. I think we are all afraid that that's exactly what many states are going to do because we've seen it before when there are budget shortfalls, that one of the first things that states have cut is community-based services for people with disabilities. So it's important now that states are going to be looking at their Medicaid budgets and deciding what they cut, that they not cut community-based services, because we can say, you know, if you do that, you may think you're saving money, but you're going to be paying for people in institutions then, and that is not going to save you money. So that is, that is another piece that I think is important. And I think we need to remind states that they still have a lot of legal obligations that they have now. They still have, for example, they still have Olmstead. They need to comply with that. They need to make sure that they are serving people in the community if they can be served in the community and not in an institution unless they want to be there. And so most people don't. So that, that is true. Regardless of this big beautiful bill act.

Yeah, what I hope does also not happen is that people that feel this is way too hard for me, you know, this work requirement, and they hear that at the nursing homes that they do help with this, that, you know, they'll, they'll want to go there. But my thinking is How would they go there if from the beginning they don't have Medicaid? I guess the only way they would be is if they did have the work requirements. But if not, I'm even wondering, wow, can't believe the nursing home lobbying, you know, wasn't able to stop this. But how would you go if you don't have Medicaid?

Right. Well, nursing homes often have something they call presumptive eligibility, which means they will take people if they know that they're likely to be eligible, and then they will serve them and help the person apply for Medicaid, and then they will get Medicaid retroactively for a period of time. Um, this bill actually cuts that retroactive eligibility too. It cuts it down for everybody. Because typically the rule has been for many years that when you apply for Medicaid, you can get it and you can get the— I'm sorry, if you're eligible for it, you can get it and then get reimbursement for services going back 3 months before you applied. And this cuts that down to 2 months in some places and 1 month some places. And so that, you know, it's certainly going to be harder for people to get that coverage. But I hope the message that people take is not that, you know, it's better to go live in an institution just because, you know, you may get more help there in dealing with these paperwork requirements. I think we just need to make sure that people in the community are able to get the help they need just with these paperwork requirements.

I would also say in your state, just as Jennifer was talking about being an advocate, you need to be pounding them constantly about this, that you are not going to vote for them— you know, in the midterm, you have to be nonstop pounding them. And you're going to say, yeah, but that's a way off. Yeah, but way off comes faster than you think. And the only way— yeah, the only way you're going to get people to say, hey, I got to do something, is if no matter what, no matter what fear someone may have, They don't want to lose being in Congress. They don't want to lose that stature, that seat, because if they are voted out, fear won't matter. They're not there. So, you know, it can't be that they're afraid to say what they think. So, I mean, what do you think about that, Jennifer?

I think that's right. It seems like a lot of people voted for this bill based on fear. Last year, actually. And apparently without fully understanding what was in it, because it was more than 1,000 pages at some point. And it was— it went through Congress in a very, very short period of time. And the last few days, there were many, many changes and people were working throughout the night and it was very hard to keep up with what was in and out of that bill. And I think the people need to understand the consequences of what they voted for. They need to understand what it's going to mean for real people and they need to be willing to do something about that because they have created a lot of problems that will need to be solved. And Congress is going to have to fix this. So if they want to get reelected, they are going to have to understand the consequences of this bill. And, um, yeah. The people who are going to be in the next Congress should be people who will fix this problem.

And you've got to make that clear nonstop. You know, you've got to be— and believe me, when you see certain things happen, such as with Medicaid, you're going to say, oh my God, I didn't know that would happen. But now you know, and you will know directly. For some of you, you've got— you want to see change. There's this one powerful weapon that you have, the vote. That's your powerful weapon to— for change is the vote. Well, Jennifer, I have to ask you what message you have for our listeners today.

Well, I would say happy Disability Pride Month, and including for people with mental health disabilities rather than happy mental health month. Let's make it happy Disability Pride Month. And I, you know, we're coming up on the 35th anniversary of the ADA, which is hard to believe, and it is— it has been a very difficult time. I think these last weeks have been some of the darkest that I can remember. It is hard to get one's head around the fact that this is where our country is, that this is what our Congress has just enacted. It is a pretty bleak vision for people who— millions and millions of people who rely on Medicaid, on food stamps, on other important benefits that will be cut by this legislation. But— and these are, I should say, the largest cuts in the history of the Medicaid program. But I think we will prevail at some point. We need to keep fighting. This is a long march and we have been in dark places before. And the last thing that we can afford to do is give up. It is— sometimes it takes, you know, being in a dark place to get people to understand the importance of fighting and, you know, of changing some of the things that will happen. I think there will be some stark pictures of what happens, some really compelling stories, and never give up is my message. We need to keep up the fight and we will win.

We will. And I so agree with Jennifer. The worst thing you can do is nothing. The worst thing you can do is cower. Remember Civil Rights Act, remember other acts. You know, it wasn't overnight that they won these fights, but you don't have that long. We have that midterm not that far away. You gotta speak up. You have to. Don't sit back. Don't sit back. You've gotta do something. And to everyone listening with a disability, I mean you too. You gotta get out there. You gotta fight the fight and show people we are strong. We are not weak. We have the firepower. We are strong people, not ashamed. And with that, we're going to end the show. And guess what? You'll get to hear Mathis on the mic not very long from now. We're going to end this show with, as we always do, with a quote. And this quote is, mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but Stigma and bias shame us all, said President Bill Clinton. This is America's Voice, where disability matters, at voiceamerica.com. Talk to you all next week, and in the words of Mary Brocker, when you get up tomorrow, remember, choose joy.

Voice America would like to thank you for tuning in. Please join us next Tuesday at 11 AM Pacific time and 2 PM Eastern time for another installment of Disability Matters right here on the Voice America Variety Channel. We are the leader in live internet talk radio. VoiceAmerica.com.