New law mandates insurance coverage of autism

Opinion

December 31, 2008

Anonymous McLeansboro Times-Leader Wed Dec 31, 2008, 08:58 PM CST

By GARY FORBY

Illinois State Senator

I left off the column last week discussing legislation which becomes law at the beginning of the new year.

This week, I’d like to make note of a piece of legislation that was recently signed into law after the writing of last week's column. This particular piece of legislation concerned one of the more important issues that the General Assembly dealt with this past session — providing for those living with autism.

Senate Bill 934, which is now law, requires insurers to cover the diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders and will provide a maximum benefit of $36,000 per year.

Furthermore, an individual will not be subject to any limits on the number of visits to an autism service provider. This may include psychiatric, psychological, rehabilitative and pharmacy care as well as a number of types of therapeutic care.

Without this coverage, families often pay upward of $50,000 per year out-of-pocket for these services. Families should not have to worry about being able to afford the expenses for autistic children.

Today, as many as one in 150 children are affected, amounting to a tenfold increase over the past 20 years.

In terms of the costs those living with autism incur, some estimates have shown that it could cost as much as $3.2 million to provide care for each person over a lifetime.

Estimates also show that the annual cost of providing for all people living with autism may reach as high as $90 billion and will, without question, continue to rise.

With these growing costs, it would have been irresponsible to not take action in providing thousands of families with this needed support.

Picking up from last week, here are two additional bills that I sponsored in the Senate that are set to become law today (Jan. 1):

Rewarding Our Veterans

House Bill 5905 will require public universities to grant in-state tuition to returning military personnel and their dependents.

The active-duty military personnel must be stationed within Illinois a minimum of three years prior to being transferred out of state. Military personnel will also be required to enroll within 18 months of their immediate return after service or on reassignment to Illinois and continue to be enrolled in the university to receive the in-state tuition.

Policies at community colleges are already flexible enough to allow the in-state tuition for these individuals, so this new law will simply add public universities to allow this practice.

Keeping Our Communities Safe

House Bill 2671 prohibits anyone who is registered as a sex offender to be eligible to be an elections judge.

The General Assembly recently passed legislation to expand a program that had previously allowed high school seniors to serve as election judges to now also include high school juniors.

HB 2671 works as a safeguard, changing the law so that a registered sex offender will not be able to serve as an election judge alongside a 16-year-old high school junior.

• Gary Forby is an Illinois state senator in the 59th District, which includes part of Hamilton County.

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