The attached excerpt and link are from Put ABA back in HB 1224 on Pete's blog A Perfectly Cromulent Blog Pop culture related smart-assery . The article is written in the blogger's irrevent style and is a textbook example of the need to include specific reference to ABA in legislation governing provision of health care coverage for autism. Whether it is Canada or Texas governments and lobbyists do not want legislation to require that Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) be covered as a health care intervention for autism. Even though ABA is THE proven effective intervention for autism, even though autism reates are soaring, and even though studies document huge long term savings to governments and society ABA is still resisted while almost any other treatment for any other ailment receives coverage. Pete's commentary is very well written, gets to the point and tells a tale of government unresponsiveness to autism which is as true of the Government of Canada as it is of the Government of Texas.
"Which is what makes the amendment to HB 1224 so maddening. After all, if I was feeling a little down in the dumps, my health plan would cheerfully cover the cost of my happy pills. If I drunkenly jawed off to Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipović in a Zagreb bar and he broke my jaw, insurance would cover the emergency room visit and my subsequent weeks of pain meds. Hell, if I was an 80-year old man having trouble getting a goddamned hard-on, insurance would cover my boner pills, but therapy to help my daughter become a functional and productive member of society and not just another ward of the state after her parents die? We can apparently fuck right off.
So we're choosing to tell our daughter's story now, after being quiet about it for the last 16 months: to emphasize how important it is that this bill pass in its original form. If it seems opportunistic or self-serving, well...there's not much I can say about that, except that things like ABA and other therapy programs would seem to be the point of insurance: to insure the well-being of these kids who otherwise would be without hope for a future.
Finally, the only thing that really gave me pause about posting this was something that was said to me about the possibility SWSNBN might read this later on in her life and be mortified. My only response to that is this: I'm not a religious person, so prayer is out of the question, but I hope beyond anything I have ever hoped in my miserable life that my daughter, at some point in the future, is able to read this blog and yell at her father about it. I want that so badly it physically hurts."
http://www.whiterose.org/pete/blog/archives/010441.html
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