Both Autism Bills in Florida Pass!

Both SB 2654 and HB 1291 passed in the State House and Senate Committee meetings. These bills will reform Florida state law to provide appropriate insurance coverage for children with autism for treatments and therapies.

This is HUGE! In our case, "Big Stuff" is an Aspie (He has Asperger's Syndrome), but because he was "normal" meaning he'd met all his milestones and he spoke and had/has a large vocabulary insurance wouldn't cover the testing (even after his diagnosis).

My son thinks in brilliant and different ways that have taught me and hubby and others sooo much, but he did require some OT (occupational therapy), at first (which by the way is not cheap), to help with his handwriting and other day to day things that most would take for granted like dressing yourself in something other than a T-shirt and pants/short with an elastic waistband...he knew how to button, zip, and tie things, but he didn't always have the physical strength to do so, and it frustrated him more than it did Hubby and I as "Big Stuff" understandably wanted privacy when doing things like dressing; however, insurance wouldn't cover the OT because "If your son has Autism how can he speak? We'll only cover therapy if he's not speaking or has never spoken." Needless to say, we paid it out of pocket. He can now do those things easily and is no longer undergoing OT. He wanted to do things like swimming, at which he excels, and gymnastics, which he loves, and piano lessons, which he is scarily good at for his age. His therapist agreed with us that these things would be better for him than traditional OT because {a} he can now do the day to day stuff and {b} HE LOVES DOING THEM! An add bonus for us was that all of these things together didn't hit our pocketbook as hard as the OT by itself did.

ANYWAY...that's just an example of how this could help a lot of families. Here are the summaries of the State House and State Senate Bills that passed.


HB 1291 - Autism Spectrum Disorder

GENERAL BILL
by Porth (CO-SPONSORS) Anderson; Brandenburg; Chestnut; Coley; Davis, D.; Fitzgerald; Flores; Garcia, L.; Gibbons; Heller; Jenne; Kiar; Kriseman; Llorente; Machek; Nehr; Planas; Robaina; Sachs; Schwartz; Vana; Williams; Zapata

Autism Spectrum Disorder: Includes autism spectrum disorder within training requirements for personnel of child care facilities; requires health insurance plans to provide coverage for screening, diagnosis, intervention, & treatment of autism spectrum disorder in children; requires treatment plan; prohibits insurers from denying or refusing coverage or refusing to renew or reissue or terminate coverage based on diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder; provides coverage limitations; provides treatment plan requirements; limits frequency of requests for updating treatment plan; provides maximum benefits limitation; requires public institutions of higher education to incorporate into educator certificate course curricula recommendations of Commissioner of Education relating to autism awareness & teaching students who have autism spectrum disorder; requires commissioner to develop recommendations for instruction & course curricula relating to autism spectrum disorder & requires commissioner to submit such recommendations to SBE & BOG; requires DOH, in conjunction with DOE, DCFS, AHCA, & APD to establish statewide system of early autism spectrum disorder intervention services for infants & toddlers; requires DOH to establish Internet website for disseminating information.

Effective Date: January 1, 2009, and applies to health insurance policies or plans issued, renewed, entered into, or delivered on or after that date.



CS/SB 2654 - Autism Spectrum Disorder [EPCC]

GENERAL BILL
by Banking and Insurance and Geller (CO-SPONSORS) Ring; Bennett; Deutch; Villalobos; Rich; Fasano; Garcia; Wise; Atwater; Margolis

Autism Spectrum Disorder [EPCC]: Cites this act as the "Window of Opportunity Act." Requires health insurance plans to provide coverage for screening, diagnosis, intervention, and treatment of autism spectrum disorder in certain children. Prohibits an insurer from denying or refusing coverage or refusing to renew or reissue or terminate coverage based on a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, etc.

Effective Date: 01/01/2009

You can read both Florida Bills in their entirety through the following links:

HB 1291

AND

CS/SB 2654

Both Autism Bills in Florida Pass!

http://andthisismypart.blogspot.com/2008/03/both-autism-bills-in-florida-pass.html