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Autism Speaks has been working with families in different states to introduce a very important and necessary new bill that would require private health insurance companies to cover services for children with ASD. The body of the bill is taken from the model prepared by Autism Speaks, which is provided on their Autism Votes website (Model Autism Insurance Act). In fourteen states, legislators have introduced this bill or a slight variant. Eight states have already passed the bill, and eleven more have bills awaiting introduction. The Autism Speaks website states:
“The insurance legislation supported by Autism Speaks specifically targets coverage of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and other structured behavioral therapies.”
While the language in the model bill does not exclude other approaches directly, ICDL believes that it would be more helpful to children for new legislation to mainly emphasize the importance of tailoring the intervention to the child and family rather than mentioning a specific therapy. However, if the legislation mentions ABA, it should also mention the following definition of developmental approaches:
“Developmentally-based programs” means structured interventions that focus on each child’s individual differences and builds healthy foundations of emotional, social, and intellectual development by helping all caregivers and therapists tailor the approach to the child’s unique developmental profile;
Some bills also refer to “evidence-based” therapies. This phrase "evidence-based" should be replaced with "science-based".
The term “science-based” allows for newer, potentially more helpful approaches to be implemented, and avoids limiting coverage to only approaches that have been rigorously studied, but do not necessarily address the core deficits of children with ASD as effectively as other science-based approaches.
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