An autism treatment worth funding
The Autism News | English
State law requires insurers to include coverage for autism in comprehensive healthcare policies. Now, lawmakers want to go a step further, requiring coverage of a particular autism treatment: applied behavioral analysis. Insurers are resisting. They don’t question the effectiveness of the therapy; they just say it doesn’t fit the definition of “medical” treatment. Their position reflects how crucial parts of the healthcare system are wedded to the status quo, regardless of what’s best for patients. State lawmakers have passed a bill to overcome the insurers’ resistance, and Gov. Jerry Brown should sign it.
Researchers have found that a person’s brain makes crucial internal connections partly in response to genetics and partly in response to interactions with the environment. Autistic children don’t interact in the usual way, so their brains don’t make the proper connections. Applied behavioral analysis attempts to provide the interactions they’d been missing, encouraging their brains to adapt and make the right connections. Studies have shown that these techniques can help autistic individuals of any age, for example by teaching them to communicate effectively. And when preschoolers receive an intense program of applied behavioral analysis, they may make so much progress that they no longer need special education classes.
The therapy is offered to preschoolers by regional centers for the developmentally disabled, which are jointly funded by the state and federal governments. But the regional centers treat only the most severely disabled, leaving many parents to come up with the tens of thousands of dollars needed to pay for private care. Those who can’t must rely on the special education classes provided by increasingly strained school districts.
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