Kids with autism face double standard, By Maura Lerner, April 4, 2011, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “Two years ago, a single mother in the Twin Cities asked the state Medicaid program to pay for an intensive type of autism therapy for her 2-year-old son. She was turned down. State officials said the treatment — known as Applied Behavior Analysis, or ABA — is ‘not now, and never has been,’ a covered service. It turns out, though, that’s not the whole story. For years, Minnesota taxpayers have been subsidizing that same treatment, which can cost up to $100,000 a year, for middle-class and even wealthy families, including the children of lawyers and business executives. Last year, the state Medicaid program spent $13.5 million on ABA treatments for 379 children — most of them above the poverty line, according to state records. Those families have been able to tap into Medicaid through a special disability category that has no limit on family income. Yet the state tells some of its poorest children, who are in Medicaid managed-care plans, that ABA is simply not an option…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty