
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 29, 1994                   TAG: 9401290094
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NO JOB, NO MONEY, NO INSURANCE

Charlie Miller, shot 24 years ago while having a friend's car repaired at an Atlanta service station, is a quadriplegic. The .38-caliber slug that tore through his jawbone below his left ear and severed his spinal cord is still lodged between his fifth and sixth vertebrae.

The injury requires that the 41-year-old use a motorized wheelchair, pay for a full-time, live-in assistant and take a long list of prescription medicines to treat numerous health problems. He lives on $460 a month in Social Security benefits.

In many ways, Miller is typical of severely disabled people in this country: Most are unemployed, live in poverty and lack private health insurance.

That is the profile from a Census Bureau report on Americans with disabilities released Friday in Washington. It is the first comprehensive survey of disability that the bureau has done.

The report, based on interviews with 30,000 people, found that 49 million people - nearly one in five Americans - are disabled. Almost half of them - 24 million, or one out of 10 - are severely disabled.

The study, which did not include people living in institutions or nursing homes, defines a disability as a limitation in performing at least one daily living skill. A severe disability is described as one that makes a person unable to perform one or more basic functions, such as seeing, hearing, speaking, climbing stairs or walking.

The definition is broader than ones used by the bureau in past surveys; and unlike earlier reports that have focused on specific age groups or types of disability, this study covers the full range, said the report's author, Jack McNeil.

McNeil, a special assistant at the bureau, called the employment findings the most significant.

Not surprisingly, he noted, severely disabled people are much less likely to be employed - and consequently more likely to live in poverty and lack private insurance - than people with moderate or no disabilities.

For severely disabled people ages 21 to 64, the employment rate is 23 percent, the survey found. The job rate for the able-bodied is 81 percent, and the rate among those with a mild disability is 76 percent.

The numbers "document the task that lies ahead" in making it possible for people with disabilities to join the work force, McNeil said.

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that employers make reasonable adjustments to accommodate the disabled. But it will take years, perhaps decades, to measure the impact of that law, said David Ffeifer, past president of the Society for Disability Studies and a professor at Suffolk University in Boston.

The study also found that among the severely disabled, 48 percent of those 15 to 64 had private health-insurance coverage compared with 80 percent of able-bodied people. Thirty-six percent of the severely disabled were covered by Medicaid or Medicare, compared with 5 percent of able-bodied people.

by CNB