Michigan Jewish Conference

Health and Welfare

Laws which Interfere with Religious Practices

Separation of Church and State

Health and Welfare

Senior Health Care and Services

The entire continuum of health care and social services for the aging population is of critical importance to the MJC. The MJC is committed to initiatives and programs that facilitate independent living and allow an individual to age with dignity in their own community.

Long-term care: The MJC encourages and supports the implementation of the long-term health care task force plan.

Health Staffing: Recruiting and maintaining quality staff for nursing and home health agencies is a major challenge for service providers. The direct care wage pass-through, while well meaning and going a significant way toward addressing the wage issue, is still flawed.  Many agencies are forced to pay wage increases over and above the wage pass-through to attract and maintain qualified employees.

Home health and nursing home: The MJC is committed to initiatives and programs that facilitate independent living. Reimbursement rates to home health agencies need to be realistic.

Adult Day Care: Allowing someone to live independently includes programming for him or her outside the home. There needs to be funds available to pay for daytime adult day care.

Medicaid: The Conference supports waivers to allow Medicaid funds to pay for assisted living.

Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities: This refers to the phenomenon where individuals moved into housing when they were young, aged in place and now need supportive services to remain there. The MJC support programs and initiatives that support these services.

The entire continuum of health care and social services for the disabled population is of critical importance to the MJC. The MJC is committed to initiatives and programs that facilitate independent living and allow an individual to live with dignity in their own community.

Mental health benefits and parity: Safeguarding mental health benefits and achieving parity in funding and treatment of physical and mental health is a priority of the MJC. Additionally the MJC believes that no qualified health plan should limit the number of treatment sessions for patients suffering from mental illness

Direct Care Wages: (see Health Staffing under Senior Health Care and Services)

Transportation: One of the major problems in the Jewish Community is transportation for the elderly and the disabled. Even if public transportation is available, these populations often require an escort.  For someone to live in the community, the person must have his or her basic needs met.  These needs include getting to medical appointments and necessary shopping.  The MJC supports programs and initiatives that address the problem of transportation.

Housing: To accommodate a growing demographic trend, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Section 202 Housing Program and Section 811 Disabled Housing need to be adequately funded. 

While the state has technically ended what was known as welfare, the fact remains that there are still people living in poverty. The new system has created more of the ‘working poor’; people who maintain minimum wage jobs but still cannot support their families.

The MJC supports legislation and programs that will help families and individuals move from dependency on the government to true self-sufficiency. The MJC also supports initiatives that provide families with realistic work opportunities and adequate financial and social service supports as well as programs that attack problems of inadequate education, housing, health care and persistent, fundamental illiteracy.  These support services must include but not be limited to job training, transportation, housing day care, medical assistance and emergency food and shelter.

The MJC believes that all children are entitled to a quality education. Thus, the MJC supports programs and initiatives that promote a high achieving and fiscally sound public school system.  The Conference supports innovative initiatives to improve the public school system and opposes initiatives that take funds away from public schools.

Refugee Assistance

Historically, immigration issues have been treated as federal concerns.  The MJC believes that immigrants are part of the community and, if necessary, should be eligible for state assistance.  The delay for citizenship caused by the Immigration and Naturalization Service's backlog can prolong immigrant status and result in ineligibility for state assistance.  The MJC believes that immigrants should be eligible for state support services to assist them in becoming self-sufficient citizens.

Acculturation Initiatives:  The MJC supports resettlement assistance for immigrants and refugees, including English language instruction, adult literacy education and civics instruction.

Laws which Interfere with Religious Practices

Sometimes bills are introduced that interfere with the observance of Jewish laws. This is usually an unintended consequence of the proposed legislation. The MJC will oppose any legislation that impedes the practice of Judaism.

Separation of Church and State

Charitable Choice:  Charitable choice means the public funding of social service programs operated by sectarian and religiously affiliated organizations.  The MJC believes that religious institutions provide valuable and efficient social services and should continue to receive state funding.  However, any state funding of these social services must contain appropriate and effective First Amendment safeguards including those that prevent proselytization, coercion or indoctrination and that protect clients and service provider employees against discrimination on the basis of religion.

School Vouchers:  The Conference opposes any plan that provides public aid to parochial schools unless currently permitted by court decisions.

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Last modified: 03/27/2003