Maybe It's Progress: Insurance Coverage for Some Things

by Kristina Chew · 2009-03-13 15:45:00 UTC
Topics:

Hiking in black shoes
As of Monday in my native state of California, insurance coverage for speech, occupational and physical therapies for individuals on the autism spectrum has been mandated. ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) therapy is not covered by the new regulations. In Utah, a bill ("Clay's Law," SB43) that originally called on insurance companies to cover $25,000 to$50,000 of autism "treatment" has been "watered down" to the point that support is being withdrawn from it. Another bill proposes that parents be allowed to buy coverage through Utah's Health Insurance Pool; parents would have to buy such coverage by the time their child is 3 months old, way before autism is typically diagnosed in young children.

Along with the ubiquitous talk of budget cuts and schools eliminating supports and staff, this is not encouraging.

But I still wish to sound a hopeful note.

Back when Charlie was diagnosed, there wasn't any regular and widespread talk of such legislation. If you wanted to try to get your insurance to cover services for autism, you were on your own. School districts weren't cutting supports and staff because they didn't have any programs to support and sufficient, and sufficiently trained staff, to sustain them.

So maybe there is progress of a sort: Now we're clamoring to get what's needed, and the calls (here in the US) are nationwide.

Small steps are still steps and we're all still walking onward here.

Kristina Chew
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