Missouri Governor Jay Nixon was in Cape Girardeau this afternoon to announce his support of legislation that would require insurers provide coverage to children with autism spectrum disorder. Currently, parents of autistic children often cannot get insurance coverage for their kids or insurers refuse to cover treatment.

In Dempster Hall on the Southeast Missouri State University campus, the Governor outlined four principles that must be met in any autism coverage legislation: Insurers must provide not only diagnosis but also treatment; insurance policies in Missouri must expressly include coverage for Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy; Missourians must be protected from a cap on the number of service-provider visits; and it must ensure that Missourians with autism can acquire and keep their coverage.

Nixon says that a bill passed the Missouri Senate last year with a 29-to-2 vote. “Then it went over the House,” Nixon said. “After months of hard work there was a bipartisan vote out of the House Health Care Policy Committee with only one dissenting vote, and a unanimous vote of the House Rules Committee. Even with that, one motion from being heard on the floor of the Missouri House and getting a vote, that bill never came up to be heard. This year, we’re going to change that.”

Early diagnosis of autism is critical. However, many parents do not seek treatment early on in their child’s development either because they have not received correct diagnosis early enough or because it is simply too expensive. This results in much greater costs on both a financial and human level later in life.

“Early diagnosis, intervention, and treatment can literally change lives. It can also dramatically change the costs,” Nixon said. “If we intervene early, we’re able to get more independent lifestyles out of folks. We do no end up with huge cost curves on the later ends of their lives.”

Appearing with Nixon was Julie Keathley, a mother from Dexter who has fought to get treatment for her son, Mason. She gave an emotional testimony to the powerful effect that proper treatment has had on her son. She and her husband, who is now deceased, paid out of pocket for Mason’s ABA treatment, and the results were immediate and noticeable.

“The director of the program that we were in said that Mason was progressing through these sessions faster than any child they had ever had. And that was such an incentive and we could see such progress in him,” Keathley said. She added, “We knew that we were going to keep on going. There was just never any question.”

After the press conference, though, Keathley noted she will soon lose the insurance coverage she currently has from her husband’s plan when it expires in a few months. “I’ve been out shopping for insurance and I can get all kinds of people to quote me numbers for me and for my oldest son, but for my little autistic guy, they just won’t even quote a number,” she said.

Many parents with autism have left Missouri for other states like Maine or New Jersey in order to find treatment for their children. One grandfather in this situation is Mike Sciortino. His daughter’s son, Ethan, has autism. So he started an organization called “Friends of Ethan” to help raise funds for autism awareness, research, and treatment. The biggest eye-opener for Mike occurred when his daughter and grandson moved to Maine because treatment was more widely available.

“It was horrifying to have to move that far away with the family, but they did have a good school out there. From that, I think that’s what’s encouraged the things that are happening here in Cape,” he said.

The Southeast Missouri State University Autism Center for Diagnosis and Treatment is currently under construction in Cape Girardeau, with a targeted completion date for November of this year. A temporary location is on Broadway Street and diagnosticians will start working here later this month and taking appointment in September.

Connie Hebert is the director of the Southeast Missouri State University Autism Center. She’s feels the governor’s decision is a big win for families of autistic children who have been seeking treatment yet paying out of pocket. “This will allow us to offer services and not bill the families directly for those services but rather their insurance companies to pay for these necessary services, much like what happens to other disabilities,” she says.

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