Jim Conroy Letter to the EditorLetters to the Editor
Santa Barbara NewsPress
August 16, 2000
Setting the record straight
A recent guest commentary by Barbara Turner and Bob Cross on the subject of supports for Americans with developmental disabilities cited my research work. Because it was cited in an intellectually dishonest fashion, I am compelled to set the record straight.
The quote from their commentary was: "Another state-sponsored re- search project on the subject, Pennsylvania's Pennhurst Longitudinal Study of 1985, came to the same conclusion and ended its report by stating, 'The money-saving argument is primitive and misleading.' "
I did not end my report with that statement. The statement to which they refer appeared in the first part of the Recommendations section as follows: "... Because our cost analyses showed that community based care was less expensive than Pennhurst, but that nearly all of the difference was caused by lower wages and benefits for community program employees, we recommend that executives and advocates at all levels avoid the claim that tax dollars can be 'saved' by switching to community based services. If the above recommendation is implemented, costs for serving similar individuals in the two settings will become nearly equivalent. However, for people and systems similar to the one we have studied, we predict that the value (i.e., the amount and quality of service rendered versus the amount spent) will still favor community-based care. We therefore recommend substitution of this latter point in place of the primitive and misleading 'saving-money' argument in policy debates."
Because I personally wrote those words, based on five years of hard-nosed scientific research, and because the same results have been found in a dozen major studies since then, I must respectfully protest the attempt by Turner and Cross to mischaracterize the meaning of the sentence they misquoted. The meaning of the paragraph is almost precisely the opposite of the position they advocate in their letter.
The unfair difference in wages mentioned in my 1985 paragraph still exists, unfortunately. It is extremely relevant that the nation's first lawsuit intended to challenge this wage disparity between institutional and community workers has recently been filed in California. The lawsuit contends the wage disparity is a form of discrimination that is illegal under three federal laws. In my opinion, it's about time.
Jim Conroy
Executive director
Center for Outcome Analysis
Rosemont, Pa.