Senate rejects autism-insurance bill
Published: February 11, 2009
Updated: February 11, 2009
The state Senate has rejected for the year efforts to force insurance companies to pay for treatment for children with autism.
The emotionally fraught measure, Senate Bill 1260 by Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel, R-Fauquier, had been watered down. She initially sought mandated coverage through age 21, but it was slashed to age 6 by the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee.
Another blow to the bill came when the Senate Finance Committee tacked on language that said if the state couldn’t find the money, it would not provide coverage for government workers.
That angered Sen. Frank W. Wagner, R-Virginia Beach. Saying it was unfair to exclude public employees, while requiring benefits for private-sector workers, he said, “We ought to have the guts to go into our own budget and find the bucks for it.“
Rather than put the bill to vote last night, senators instead buried it on a parliamentary move, returning the measure to the Finance Committee, which no longer can consider Senate-written legislation.
“The legislative process is an ugly process, and this has been particularly ugly,“ said Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, who proposed sending the bill back to the money panel.
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Reader Reactions
Alright… a few things:
Dave: number de jure, huh? I was unaware that our government had established a legal number of autistic people per capita. Don’t use terms for which you don’t know the definition.
Kickthekoolaid: You refrain of absolute free market capitalism is a tired one. You’ve only got one rationale in your debate chest and you apply it to every situation. Sorry, but you’re sadly mistaken if you think that insurance companies would do their stated jobs without the government holding their feet to the flames. It’s all about balance. Life is rarely so clearly black and white as you make it out to be.
Hjackson: I don’t even know where to start with you. People pay insurance for a reason: to ensure that their medical expenses are covered as needed. That’s what insurance companies are there for. That’s what people pay them for. They’re not employee collectives; they are businesses who agree to a set of terms and services in exchange for money.
As well, autism has been around for a long, long time. 25 years ago, they were just called “imbeciles”, “idiots” and “morons” (not my words… that was the nomenclature back then). After that, they were classified as “retarded”. Later on, the American Psychological Association created a differential diagnosis for autism based on distinct characteristics of autism spectrum disorders. There are references going back 1000’s of years to “savants”. What do you think they were describing?
Insurance companies don’t pay anything. All claims are paid by policyholders. Parents with autistic kids just want to transfer the financial burden to others when the responsibility lies with them. Autism is a recent event. Something in the parents genes or something the mother did or did not do while pregnant.
This socialistic mentality is getting out of hand. More and more people are trying to transfer their responsibilites to others who are having a hard enough time taking care of themselves and their families needs. They sure don’t need to be paying for others.
ezjim: That is the injustice of it. No one would deny that genuinely, profoundly autistic children need special care. They get lost in the shuffle when ‘activists’ and ‘advocates’ get in the act and try to broaden the definition of the condition. The statistic de jure lately has been 1 in 150 children have autism. How was that number arrived at? What definition was used to justify such a diagnosis? Perhaps those who really care about the profoundly disabled need to demand more accountability from those ‘looking out for them’who either by errors of commission or omission do them a disservice.
ezjim… we have universal health care. It’s called Medicaid and it costs us billions. To set up what you and The Great Leader want would make what these idiots are spedning now look like chump change.
I’d advise anyone who thinks government-sponsored health care for all is a good idea to look at Canada and Great Britain. One look at the disaster those programs are and you’d have to be dumber than a sack of hair to want anything close to it.
we need to get the same coverage that our government employees enjoy,,it is extremely cheap especially our congress/senate,we need to put the needs of our own first and stop all this free ins. for illegals or at least send the bill to mexico,we need to use our tech. to screen the womb for defects and let the parents decide that either they abort or keep the child,but not expect us to be forced to support the child w/higher ins.payments or welfare payments.
We also should have universal health care in this country like every other industrialized country. About half of Americans are already covered by some form of government insurance. The rest of us are being discriminated against.
The government shouldn’t be forcing insurance companies to do anything. They’re private companies.
The senators who voted against autism coverage should spend a week caring for a severely autistic child. Then maybe they could balance the needs of these families versus the payola they receive from insurance lobbyists.
As for the autism thing, that’s just plain wrong.
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