Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee has signed a law that will require health insurance companies in this state to provide coverage of the kinds of therapies that help children who have autism. This makes Rhode Island the twenty-seventh state to make this type of law.
There was a bill called Senate Bill 107 that Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee has now signed into law. This new law requires health insurance companies to provide coverage for certain kinds of autism therapies. Specifically, this law makes insurers cover the costs of applied behavior analysis (ABA). The law also requires coverage of speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy for children who have autism, and who are age fifteen or younger. The maximum benefit of coverage for these therapies is $32,000 per year.
Applied behavioral therapy, or ABA, is a type of therapy that teaches social skills, motor skills, and verbal behaviors. It can also be used to teach reasoning skills.
This type of therapy is especially useful for children who have been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. These children tend to have difficulty picking up on social skills that other children would automatically develop, understand, and use correctly in order to communicate with peers, relatives, and other people. It uses a lot of positive reinforcement, and careful and detailed behavioral observation. ABA therapy is something that is preformed by a certified behavior analyst.
These types of therapies can be expensive. Not every state has passed a law that makes private insurance companies cover the costs of these types of treatments. This means that parents who live in states that don’t have laws requiring insurers to cover autism treatments are stuck paying for it out of their own pockets. In some cases, this can cost as much as $50,000 a year. This is more than some families make in a year’s time.
Rhode Island is the twenty-seventh state to sign a law of this kind. The other twenty-six states include Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont and Wisconsin. Virginia and California have just recently signed similar laws. New York has a bill in place that has passed, but at this time it is waiting for the New York Governor to sign it.
Image by Taber Andrew Bain on Flickr