7/26/11

Today, I join my fellow Americans in celebrating the anniversary of the passage of a great civil rights achievement, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). As we look back at the progress we’ve made in the last 21 years, we must also look forward and recommit ourselves to achieving the law’s goals of ensuring “equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency” for all Americans with disabilities.

In the last two years, we have taken significant steps to make that happen. While the ADA broke down barriers in housing and the workplace, schools, shopping malls, telecommunications and public transportation, it left one key barrier: discrimination in the health insurance market. But through the Affordable Care Act, we are finally bringing this practice to an end.

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Available at: http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2011pres/07/20110726a.html