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Just to show you how important "pressure" is, here is what Crain's Business said about this hearing:"Sen. Tom George, R-Kalamazoo, said he called the hearing on mandates after receiving many requests for bills from special-interest groups."
THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO SENT EMAILS ON TYLER'S BEHALF!!!! A special thanks to Steve's mom and Grandma for attending the hearing to support our little guy!
Autism Speaks organized the speakers at the hearing and also are really emphasizing the "discrimination" aspect of the lack of autism insurance. One mother explained how her one son who was mildly speech delayed qualified for speech therapy funded by insurance. Her child with autism, however, did not qualify due to the diagnosis. I myself, received official word about whether or not ABA therapy would be covered through Tyler via our health insurance. I already knew that answer would be no but the HR person said she'd look into it. Here was the official response:
She said it's considered experimental / investigative so is not covered as of yet. It has not been established long enough to determine the long range effectiveness at this point.
I'm not sure how many years something is considered investigative or experiemental before they come to a conclusion that it works but, in a landmark 1987 study found that nearly half (47%) of the children who received 40 hours per week of ABA therapy were eventually able to complete normal first-grade classes and achieved normal intellectual and educational functioning by the end of first grade. While none of children who received the therapy only 10 hours per week were able to do the same. There was a mother at the hearing last night who had a Masters in Business (found out the whole story from Carrie) and quit her job to become a behavioral analyst so she could help her son with his fight with autism. Her son is now 11 and considered recovered. So there is also plenty of data to support that the long range effectiveness of ABA therapy. Please continue to join us in our battle for autism insurance coverage. Each day is significant!
Here is a quick video for anyone that needs a reminder of how a bill becomes a law. I majored in Policital Science in college and still needed to refresh my brain so don't feel bad if you don't know how it all works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEJL2Uuv-oQ
Therapy: Tyler said "down" at the appropriate time durign Ring Around the Rosie on Monday during his evaluation! He also said "ball" today when we were reviewing a videotaped session. Tyler was very interested in watching the tapes too and said "ball" when we talked about it on the video, same with ring around the rosie.
Health wise, he seems to be having some allergy issues which we are keeping our eye on. Whenever we start anythign new with him we try to watch for anything abnormal and he's been having runny/watery eyes and they've been puffy and he has a bit of a cough. It's a rare day that he's fully healthy (which really leads me to believe the biomedical theory of autism) which then makes it hard for him to take in everything he's supposed to be learning in his enviroment, because he just doesn't feel good most the time. Hopefuly when we'll get the results from his urine test soon and be able to get moving on whatever else we need to do.
