Autism Speaks Official Blog

This is a guest post by Lorri Unumb, Autism Speaks senior policy advisor and counsel. Lorri also teaches “Autism and the Law” at the George Washington University Law School.

In the past three years, 20 states have passed laws requiring health insurance policies to cover individuals with autism and the treatments prescribed by doctors for autism. The New York legislature is on the verge of passing one of the broadest autism insurance reform bills in the nation, and yet some members of the autism community oppose the bill, largely because of its broadness. I write to offer some historical and legal perspective on a bill that embraces a broad approach to legislating.

I have been following New York’s autism legislation with great interest, not only because of my job as policy advisor with Autism Speaks but also because my son with severe autism has health insurance that is governed by New York law. I have a vested personal and professional interest in the legislation.

Further, I have a somewhat unique historical perspective, given my role in helping to spur the national movement toward autism insurance reform. In 2005, while I was a law professor, I wrote legislation in South Carolina to require health insurance coverage for autism. The bill broadly required that:

A health insurance plan as defined in this section must provide coverage for the treatment of autism spectrum disorder. Coverage provided under this section is limited to treatment that is prescribed by the insured’s treating medical doctor in accordance with a treatment plan.

The bill did not list the particular treatments that insurance must cover; rather, it required insurers to cover whatever the doctor prescribes, within reason. It contained language that protected the insurers from having to pay for treatments that were unnecessary, not evidence-based, provided by family members, and the like:

[T]he coverage required . . . may be subject to other general exclusions and limitations of the health insurance plan, including, but not limited to, coordination of benefits, participating provider requirements, restrictions on services provided by family or household members, utilization review of health care services including review of medical necessity, case management, and other managed care provisions.

This legislation passed in South Carolina in 2007, and since that time, children with autism have been receiving meaningful coverage for mainstream treatments prescribed by their doctors, including psychological care, speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and the most commonly-prescribed treatment for autism, applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy.

The South Carolina law is very similar to Indiana’s autism insurance statute, and individuals with autism in Indiana have likewise been receiving coverage under that state’s broadly written bill.

Since 2007, a number of states have passed autism insurance bills that do not embrace the broad approach; instead, they laundry-list the treatments that must be covered. A typical list from these states includes psychological care, psychiatric care, therapeutic care (OT, PT, ST), pharmacological care, and behavioral therapy (ABA). Also, most bills that have passed since 2007 contain significant limitations of coverage, such as a cap that limits spending on ABA therapy to $50,000 per year or an age cap that requires coverage only through age 21.

In 2009, there were pending in the New York legislature four different autism insurance bills, three of which contained a laundry-list of treatments to be covered. The lists varied considerably, and members of the autism community could not agree on how expansive the list should be. The bills also contained various age and dollar caps on coverage.

In October 2009, the Senate Insurance Committee conducted a hearing on all of the pending autism bills. The all-day hearing included testimony from dozens of witnesses and was extremely comprehensive.

After hearing testimony on the competing bills, the committee chair decided to craft his own bill, which returned to the broad approach of merely legislating coverage and leaving for another body (a regulatory body) the exact specifics of the coverage.

As a parent and a lawyer, I support this approach.

By necessity, legislators are generalists and should not be called upon to list the treatment options from which doctors may choose, or to weigh the evidence supporting one medical treatment against the evidence supporting another. It’s not their job. In the context of insurance legislation, their job is to broadly require coverage if they find coverage lacking and within the public interest.

Critics of this bill don’t like the broad approach. They want the certainty of a legislative laundry-list, as has been provided in numerous other states. However, critics fail to acknowledge that the New York autism community itself could not agree on the list and such disagreement is what led to the broad bill in the first place. I have worked with the autism community in almost all of the states that produced laundry-list-type bills and statutes, and never was there dissension within the community that would have required the legislature to choose among various lists.

Critics lodge several other complaints, too.

First, critics don’t like that the bill limits the insurers’ responsibility to covering treatments that are “evidence-based, peer-reviewed and clinically proven.” Critics say this tripartite standard creates an impossibly high threshold that no treatments will meet.

It is not uncommon for states to limit insurers’ responsibility to covering treatments that are “evidence-based,” which I believe is an appropriate limitation. Generally, premium-payers expect insurers to cover mainstream treatments but do not expect insurers to cover treatments that have not been empirically validated.

The issue in the New York bill is the addition of the terms “peer-reviewed” and “clinically proven.” The addition of these terms does not create a higher standard. To be “evidence-based,” a treatment must have been studied and those studies must be have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Thus, “evidence-based” subsumes “peer-reviewed.”

Similarly, “clinically proven” simply reinforces the concept of “evidence-based” treatment but does not set a higher standard of review.

Critics of the bill have yet to name a single autism treatment that would satisfy the traditional standard of “evidence-based” but would not satisfy the tripartite standard.

It seems that what the bill’s opponents really want is coverage for treatments that are not evidence-based. Certainly, there are many protocols that parents of children with autism try on their children that are lacking sufficient evidence of efficacy. I have used some of them with my own son, and I don’t question the intentions of other parents who do so. But I understand that insurers must draw the line somewhere, and “evidence-based” is where the line is traditionally drawn in health insurance.

The overall success of the autism insurance reform movement over the last three years stems largely from the fact that the autism community has not sought special treatment in insurance matters; we have sought equal treatment. All we have asked is that the mainstream treatments that our doctors prescribe for our medical condition be covered by insurance. To have continued success, we must be willing to limit the treatments for which we seek coverage to those that are evidence-based.

Opponents of the autism bill also criticize “the establishment of a four agency committee . . . to pick out whatever ‘science’ they believe in.” Actually, the bill does not establish a four-agency committee. It simply directs the Commissioner of Health to promulgate regulations (a standard practice following new legislation) and directs the Commissioner to consult with three other relevant agencies in the process. In a field where families and services often suffer because one agency never knows what another agency is doing, it is refreshing to see a collaborative process established from the outset.

Further, I am puzzled by the fear of having the Department of Health determine what treatments must be covered. The opponents wish to have a legislative body (generalists) determine a list of treatments that must be covered, but they fear a regulatory body (health specialists) doing the same?

Finally, opponents of the bill apparently fear losing coverage that currently exists under their health insurance policies or failing to obtain coverage for services like anesthesiological and endocrinological care. S.7000B/A.10372A specifies that it “shall not be construed as limiting the benefits that are otherwise available to an individual under the policy.” As such, if anesthesia is generally covered under a policy, it will still be covered without regard to the list of treatments that the Commissioner of Health develops.

Proponents of S.7000B/A.10372A, who are also parents of children with autism, do not wish to limit the treatments that any family affected by autism wishes to use with their children. Nor do we wish to narrowly restrict what doctors may prescribe for their patients. Rather, we wish to support a bill that is likely to pass – a bill with reasonable limitations that are fair to all parties. Proponents see advantages to broadly-written bills like S.7000B/A.10372A, even for those wishing to include treatments outside the mainstream. For instance, if new treatments emerge, or existing treatments go through the rigors of becoming evidence-based, these can be added through the regulatory process to the list of treatments that must be covered without the need for going back to the legislature to amend the law.

The New York autism bill is good policy. It covers individuals with autism of all ages. It does not impose artificial dollar caps on treatments, as many other states’ autism laws do. It asks the legislative and regulatory systems to operate together, as they were designed to do. And it will offer much-needed relief to individuals with autism and their families, as citizens in 21 other states are now receiving.