Anna Landre, GU student and ANC commissioner, may step down due to insurance cuts

Two years into her education at Georgetown University and four months into her term as a member of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E, Anna Landre expects that she will have to leave it all behind.

Landre — who has spinal muscular atrophy type 2 (known as SMA II) and uses a wheelchair — said her Medicaid coverage through Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey is cutting her care hours with an aide nearly in half. As a result, she has been forced to return home to New Jersey, and it’s likely she will not be able to return as a student or as an ANC commissioner this fall.

Landre expressed her disappointment with her insurer’s decision in a Twitter thread on May 28 that received widespread attention across the Georgetown student community and gathered thousands of likes and retweets. “The American healthcare system has just, quite literally, ruined my future,” she wrote.

“We’re really at a loss right now,” Landre told The DC Line in an interview. She had taken her insurance provider to court earlier this year to fight for enough care hours to continue attending Georgetown and thought they had reached an agreement. She learned on May 28, however, that New Jersey’s Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services had ruled against her — although she hasn’t been told why. Landre said she is working with a pro bono attorney from the New Jersey nonprofit Community Health Law Project to look into the likelihood of a successful appeal.

Landre needs a personal care aide for tasks like getting out of bed and going to the bathroom. The change in her Medicaid coverage will cut her access to an aide from 16 hours a day to 10, making it effectively impossible to remain a student.

Landre said that if she is not able to return as a student, she will remain in New Jersey and therefore have to step down. DC’s legal code, which specifies that ANC members must be residents of their districts, makes exceptions for “temporary absences” but defines a resident of the District as “one with no intention of presently removing himself or herself therefrom.”

She said that she does not know when the decision will be finalized, but currently does not expect to return to DC. ANC 2E chair Rick Murphy said that, if Landre ends up resigning, the commission will encourage community members to run for the seat. DC law calls for a special election to be held if more than one eligible candidate steps forward — unless a resignation occurs within six months of the next general election, which in this case isn’t scheduled until November 2020. Landre’s ANC 2E04 comprises a large swath of the Georgetown University campus, including the Southwest Quad and New South residence halls.

Other ANC commissioners have expressed their support for Landre since her announcement, which led to a May 31 article on DCist. “It should go without saying that all of Anna’s colleagues on the ANC are praying that a way can be found to allow her to remain at Georgetown and to continue as a member of the ANC,” Murphy wrote in an email to The DC Line. “She is a wonderful colleague.”

“PROUD of my @ANC2E_DC colleague Anna for fighting back. We’ve got your back, Anna!” tweeted Kishan Putta, an ANC commissioner in ANC 2E.

As a commissioner, Landre has made accessibility one of her priorities. “I’m a wheelchair user, so a lot of the inaccessible parts of Georgetown — both the campus and the neighborhood itself — are really big barriers to me and are really big barriers to others as well,” she told The Georgetown Voice in February upon being sworn in.

In a profile in The Washington Post in April, Landre said one of her goals as an activist is to change the way disabilities are discussed. For Landre, disability has never been an obstacle to working, and she has pushed to change the cliched perception that disabilities are disasters to be overcome. “I take pride in my disability,” Landre told Post columnist Theresa Vargas. “It gives me a certain strength. I don’t see it as a deficit or a problem.”

Landre is not planning to crowdfund for health care expenses, partially out of the practical concern that it would be difficult to raise enough money — she estimated the cost at $36,000 per year. But Landre also said she hopes public awareness of her situation will put pressure on government officials and insurance providers to pay for the appropriate level of care for anyone in a similar situation.

“In principle it’s not fair to let my insurance company and the state of New Jersey off the hook for it,” she said. “They need to be covering these services, and if everyone turns around and finds private funding, which not everyone can, we’re really letting them off the hook.”

Landre faced a similar challenge last year while considering an internship that paid $14 per hour — the increase in income would have disqualified her from receiving Medicaid. With the help of local New Jersey politicians, she was able to obtain an exemption.

Since then, Landre said, she has joined other activists in their fight against Medicaid privatization, a trend in states’ management of health care that she sees as largely responsible for her care being cut.

Changing public policy, however, isn’t easy, she said. “It’s tough to get a platform because it’s not exactly the most glamorous issue, and because even when I’ve gotten in the room with New Jersey bureaucrats and the people who control these regulations, they are so arrogant that [they think] absolutely nothing is wrong,” she said.

“It’s awful but a lot of times to get any reform, we have to put our bodies on the line and our health on the line in order to get any attention at all,” she said.

For now, Landre said she is going to focus on activism in New Jersey rather than DC, given that she has more contacts and experience navigating the Medicaid system there. Her goal is to get the attention of Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat who took office in 2018 on a platform of making New Jersey “more fair and just for all residents.”

Landre was quick to note that she is not the first or only person to be forced into an impossible choice by restrictive rules governing disability benefits, citing the examples of friends who have had to abandon their careers or get divorced to retain coverage.

“This isn’t just my story — it happens to so many other people because the vast majority of severely disabled Americans use Medicaid and deal with these issues,” Landre said. “There have been so many people who have come to me with the same issue … and I don’t want to see this kind of thing continue.”