Saturday, March 24, 2012

US Federal Judge: ABA Proven and Highly Effective Treatment of Children with Autism

It is hard to believe that in 2012 a government agency with responsibilities for the provision or administration of health care could take the position that ABA is an "unproven" treatment for autism.  That was the justification though of the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration in refusing to provide Medicaid coverage for ABA treatment for three persons with autism.   As reported  by the Miami Herald US Federal Judge Joan Lenard disagreed and ordered the FAHCA to provide the Medicaid coverage for the applied behavior analysis treatment: "U.S. Judge Joan Lenard ruled Friday that applied behavioral analysis be covered by Medicaid....Lenard held that ABA was a proven and highly effective treatment of children with autism."

Apparently the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration is not familiar with authorities from the US Surgeon General to the American Pediatric Association and  a number of state agencies that have reviewed the scientific literature and found ABA to be the most evidence based effective treatment for autism.  Or perhaps they   accidentally  subscribed to updates from anti-ABA activists Michelle Dawson and Laurent Mottron who have appeared (often) in the media and in Canadian legal and political proceedings in a prolonged and determined effort to prevent Canadian autistic children from receiving ABA treatment for their autism disorders.    Regardless, US Federal Judge Joan Lenard, in addition to issuing an order directing the agency to provide Medicaid coverage for ABA, has also educated the agency on the benefits of ABA treatment for children with autism disorders. 

2 comments:

Stranded said...

Yeah thats all great. However when they do recognize it as a proven science, they fudge the science to suit their purposes. For eg. Here in Ontario we have renamed this science IBI - so we can mess around with how its delivered. So you can't say hey wth kind of ABA are you sanctioning, because they have covered their behinds by giving you IBI, which in their words cannot be used for academics, socialisation, or any one thing in particular. It can only be used to diminish excessive behavior so that kids can be pushed in to the school system where the real money is being syphoned.

So in the end you are paying the taxes for these "services" and becuase they are not ABA, you are paying for the ABA too! Its all very nicely packaged and sealed with a middle finger stamped on the envelope.

M.J. said...

Not effective? Heh.

I bet the real issue is that they think it would be too expensive to provide ABA to 8,000 chiildren but that would have been a non-starter with the courts so they fell back on the "unproven treatment" line.