Autism Vox

Therapies for Autistic Students Threatened by Medicaid Cuts

by Kristina Chew, PhD on February 10th, 2007

Speech therapy for autistic students is the first example of therapies and services that could be cut if President Bush’s recommendations for regulatory changes in Medicaid and Medicare go through. The administration estimates that $3.6 billion could be saved over the next five years by eliminating Medicaid reimbursement for speech therapy and physical therapy for Medicaid-eligible students, as reported in today’s New York Times. Currently, school districts seek reimbursement to schedule the therapy, ensure that the therapy gets done, and transport the student to it; while students will still get the therapies that they need, funding for other programs may have to be cut back. ”’This would transfer the burden onto local school districts and local taxpayers,”’ Mary Kusler of the American Association of School Administrators said.

I suspect that transferring “the burden onto local school districts and local taxpayers” means cutting other programs for other non-autistic students and raising taxes—and if that is what happens, the message that will get sent is that students who need speech therapy and physical therapy are “a burden” who take away limited resources from other students. And the message that needs to get sent is that these therapies are not “extras” but very much an essential part of our students’—our autistic students’—education.

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POSTED IN: Education, Legislation, Money