SUSQUEHANNNA VALLEY CENTER RELEASES REPORT ON HOW EARLY INTERVENTION
THERAPIES CAN HELP CHILDREN WITH AUTISM AND ALSO SAVE STATE MILLIONS OF DOLLARSThe Susquehanna Valley Center for Public Policy, a non-partisan, non-profit think tank based in Hershey, has released their policy report - The Enigma of Autism: The Promise of Early Intervention Strategies - which shows how early intervention therapies, such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, behavioral therapies, and other educational therapies that begin early in a child's life and continues through adolescence, can help a child who has autism learn how to function well in life, seek higher education, and become gainfully employed.
The report estimates that the net societal benefits to Pennsylvania of at least $63 million per year can be realized if early intervention
treatments were available for all autistic children beginning at the age of two. Included in this program would be provisions that all private
health insurers would be required to offer all medically necessary
rehabilitation care to autistic children of all ages.
The Center's report - authored by Senior Fellow Charles E. Greenawalt, II, Ph.D. and Research Associate Marianne Clay - notes that currently 1 in 150 children in the United States have some form of autism. A person who has autism accrues about $3.2 million in costs to society over a lifetime. Each year, autism costs society more than $35 billion in direct and indirect expenses each year.
The report states that most commercial insurance companies in Pennsylvania have exclusions on treatments needed by children with autism. Besides the many unique challenges of having a child with autism, parents also pay huge amounts of out of pocket expenses for treatments and therapies not
covered by insurance or for services not offered by the local school
districts. The report notes that some parents report spending as much as $65,000 per year on treatments, with many families often risking their homes and the educations of their unaffected children, thereby mortgaging their future. Many families in Pennsylvania also turn to the state's funded medical assistance programs. This places a burden on the state government, since so many treatments that might otherwise be covered by private insurance are now being paid for by the state's medical assistance
programs.
The report also suggests that since autism is treatable and that many
children with early intervention and consistent therapy do get better,
insurance companies should begin covering these needed therapies. This will help relieve parents of the tremendous financial burden many are now facing, and also relieve the state of having to pay the costs for some of these services through the medical assistance program.
