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Landmark Lawsuit May Help Brain Injury Survivors
A group of brain injury survivors and their families are suing the state of Massachusetts because the state has failed to provide service options for them. It appears they've lobbied the state for years, and they've brought their pleas to six different governors.
"I feel isolated from the real world. I have little to no privacy. I don't want to live this way, and I can't think of anyone else who would," she said in the statement, read during a press conference in Boston.
Hutchinson, 54, is part of a class- action lawsuit filed yesterday against the state and the Patrick administration alleging that the Commonwealth has failed to provide community- based care for brain-injury patients. As a result, the plaintiffs say, thousands of severely handicapped residents face a lifetime of nursing home confinement in violation of federal law.
The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Springfield on behalf of four plaintiffs and the Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts, continues the debate over the extent to which the government must attempt to normalize the lives of people with the most profound disabilities.
It's a sad state of affairs when citizens must sue their home state in order to get a basic level of care, but that's what healthcare in America has devolved to. Hopefully, this case will go in a direction that causes other states to open the doors for brain injury survivors everywhere.
