Comments on: Insurance, ABA, and Older Children

By: Monday Sanity: Better Late Than Never

Monday Sanity: Better Late Than Never — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 07:14:06 +0000

[...] Chew started a discussion about legislation dealing with insurance coverage for autism treatment at Autism [...]

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:12:43 +0000

@jen,
The early years of lots of intense teaching helped Charlie tremendously and the training I received in ABA has been something I’ve returned to, to help him through tough moments. I can see how parents of older children (myself included) still use ABA and other educational therapies; ABA has helped us deal with some challenging moments. Like Regan, I don’t at all begrudge families with younger children seeking this foundation—-the last thing we need to do is to feel that we families are set against each other.

By: Regan

Regan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:29:41 +0000

Dr. Schreibman states some concerns, which I share, but having read the text of many of the bills, for the most part they define the competencies and supervision of the service delivery and, in some cases, 6 month intervals of review of efficacy. Since she does not state who the “fly-by-night” behavioral service providers are, I can’t speak to the specific competencies that she refers to, or whether she has relevant specific information which have already passed such insurance mandates.

In my own biased statement of self-interest, we tried other interventions and educational strategies, and at least for most skills, those initially based in task analysis and a behavioral approach, and data analysis have been more efficient and effective for us as instructors and less stressful to Eleanor as a student. Because our health insurance has never covered it, nor has the school system very well (I remember some truly rudimentary and tortuous DTT there), for the most part, it has been out-of-pocket, and continues so. A change in our individual situation would be most welcome, but even if there are conditions that restrict our personal ability to access, I would not begrudge those younger children for whom this is a successful approach a more streamlined ability to avoid the roadblocks and headaches that we encountered.

By: Jen

Jen — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:47:06 +0000

But to play devil’s advocate (somewhat)… Here in Canada, ABA therapy is not paid for by health insurance, but by the provincial governments. The current waiting list in our province is 2-3 years for coverage. That means that if your child is diagnosed at 3 (like our child), than he could be 6 years old before he starts to receive treatment, and I see this delay only getting longer as more children get diagnosed. Now, I realize that this is a different situation than exists in the US, but is it really fair that a child who is 11 years old, who started to receive funding before the current bottle-neck, continues to get treatment while my son loses what most experts agree are the most crucial years for ABA to work? I acknowledge that there are gains to be made in older children, but I am somewhat bitter that those gains are made at the expense of my child.