Your Child’s Health Problem Is Bad For Our Business Model

Of all the miserly positions adopted by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce during the current legislative session, the group’s stance against SB-178, a bill requiring insurance companies to cover treatment for children with autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, and pervasive developmental disorders, has to be the worst.

During a May 31 public hearing, the group signed a statement that said, in part:

“Rising health care costs undermine the ability of Wisconsin companies to offer health care benefits, and significantly, impede their ability to create and retain good-paying jobs in Wisconsin. SB-178 will make the access and affordability problems worse.”

I am finding it increasingly hard to follow the logic of WMC’s positions. I can understand why the group might oppose certain state regulations or increases in corporate taxes. Whatever. But the organization’s policy of opposing any meaningful healthcare reform is tantamount to pitting their member businesses against the interests and needs of their employees—the same employees these companies need to turn a profit. In the end, this strategy is going to hurt the state’s business climate more than any modest reforms possibly could.

This bill should be a slam-dunk for any elected official to support. Autism is a devastating neurological condition that begins to affect children around the age of three. Although it can manifest in milder forms, autistic children have severe communications problems, little capacity for typical social interactions, and often exhibit repetitive physical behavior that is frightening for parents to watch, not to mention extremely difficult for schools to accommodate.

One of the most agonizing things about the disease is that the affected children usually exhibit normal development patterns before succumbing to these symptoms. A child that parents proudly watched as he or she began to talk or play with other children are suddenly confronted with a child that may never be able to communicate again.

And the disease is growing—rapidly. Some estimates suggest that as many as 1 in 150 children have some form of autism.

Children with autism can’t be cured, but many respond very positively to treatment and therapy. In some cases, autistic patients who had been unable to communicate at all were able to develop some language and social abilities.

Although clearly a neurological problem, some insurance companies have declined to cover autism on the grounds that it is a personality disorder. At the same public hearing where WMC registered its opposition to SB-178, Joanne Juhnke, mother to a three-year old daughter with autism, testified that treatment for her child’s epilepsy was covered through her insurance, but treatment for her autism was not.

According to the Journal Sentinel, Juhnke told the committee, “We've been cobbling together what we can, doing the best we can, but it's astonishing to us that of these two neurological conditions, one of them is thumbs up and one of them is thumbs down.”

Autism treatment is costly. It’s exactly the kind of medical care that is completely necessary, yet well beyond the reach of most families to afford. And it’s exactly the kind of problem our healthcare system is grappling with that can’t be solved by health savings accounts or any of the other half-measures being proposed by Republicans in Madison.

If nothing changes to our current system then, yes, a company’s insurance costs for covering autism treatments might increase. But it’s worth noting that these costs are going to get absorbed somewhere along the line by all of us anyway. Families without any insurance options apply for Medicaid, and are then put at the bottom of long waiting lists of children who need treatment. Children with autism don’t have a lot of time; the longer treatment is delayed, the less successful it tends to be.

It’s hard to imagine the elected official who can’t see the political advantage in supporting SB-178, at least for the photo-ops. I don’t know who signaled that sticking it to families with autistic children this session was acceptable, but whoever it was must sure have some kind of power.

And it’s hard to know what advantages WMC’s member businesses see in shutting down their employees who need this treatment for their children. It’s harder still to guess how long WMC can hold out before they have to compromise on any healthcare reform. If they were willing, SB-178 would be a good place to start.

Milwaukee blogger Zachary Wisniewski writes passionately about his son who has autism as well as about roadblocks families face while seeking treatment at 13Circles.com.