Not Everyone is Happy About Ryan's Law

Following a news story in the Charleston "Post and Courier" that discussed Ryan's Law were the following comments. Thank goodness some folks had the decency to respond to the first ignoramus.

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Posted by rollo (anonymous) on April 1, 2008 at 11:04 p.m.

Wonderful, so now the insurance rates for everyone in SC go up to cover another ailment most of them have never pressed a claim against!!

And a lawyer got an award for screwing us! Isn't that SPECIAL!!!

Feel good stories always touch me, right in the wallet.


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Posted by luluhowle (anonymous) on April 2, 2008 at 10:08 p.m.

Rollo, If you really want to feel screwed and have more money taken out of your wallet, lets do absolutely nothing for these kids. Forget the few dollars more it will cost you per month, less than 1% according to the insurance industry itself, to give these children the chance to begin first grade in a regular classroom with their peers reducing the amount schools have to spend on special education. Just forget the few more dollars you take out of your wallet to provide the needed therapies that will give these kids the chance to become tax paying members of society themselves! So, if we let you keep your selfish few dollars and do nothing, you end up paying hundreds more dollars in taxes instead to house these individuals at a cost of over $4 million per person for the rest of their lives in institutions just because you are so concerned about your few dollars. There are 28,000 individuals with autism in SC now, you do the math. I too pay insurance premiums and I too have a child with autism. Parents go bankrupt in order to pay for these therapies. How does that help the economy? I have spent tens of thousands of dollars myself for these therapies that I could have spent on buying the products or services that you yourself offer. I have seen the importance and benefit of these therapies and have seen my son return to our world from the world of his own. Lorri Unumb deserves more than this award and she has righted an injustice that she herself will not benefit from! I'd call you an idiot but I pity you instead!


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Posted by cecelia (anonymous) on April 2, 2008 at 11:24 p.m.

In life, as adults, most of us have choices. We choose to drink, become alcoholics, need liver transplants, and expect insurance to pay for the rehab and transplant. We eat poor diets, become obese, and expect insurance to pay for the hospitalizations and medications for the resulting hypertension and obesity related illnesses. We smoke, and expect insurance to pay for our chemo for lung cancer. And the list goes on. I didn't smoke, drink, or do drugs during my pregnacy, or ever, for that matter. Went to the doctor for every appointment. PAID MY INSURANCE PREMIUMS, and deductables. Breastfed, provided a loving home and family for my child, who was diagnosed with autism before his second birthday. So, Rollo, why don't we just save everyone a lot of money. No coverage for adults whose bad habbits lead to their health problems, they pay out of pocket. Instead, let's give healthcare coverage only to people who have lead good clean lives and are sick or have sick children anyway. Bet it would cost less, and save you a bundle on premiums! Unless, of course, you smoke, drink, or eat fast food regularly, then I guess you'd be out of luck. Lorri is amazing, kudos to her for standing up for those who literallly can't speak for themselves.

From Rep. Nathan Ballentine's Website

Today I stumbled across this blog post from our very first sponsor of Ryan's Law, Rep. Nathan Ballentine. He modestly downplays his role in the passage of Ryan's Law in this post, but I can assure you that he was instrumental right up to the last day. -- LSU

Wednesday, April 2, is Autism Awareness Day.

I can honestly tell you that, until three ladies came into my life (Lorri Unumb, Lisa Rollins, Marcella Ridley), the only thing I knew (or thought I knew) about autism was from the movie, Rain Man.

Since that time I have learned so much and I’m pleased to see all the national attention for a much needed cause in our country.

The statistics on Autism and it’s impact are truly unbelievable.

In December 2005, I agreed to be the floor leader in the House for a bill that was commonly referred to as “Ryan’s Law”. The bill was named for Lorri Unumb’s six year old son and co-sponsors quickly signed on to give their support. Within months, there were hearings in both the House and the Senate and attention was growing!

Unfortunately though, a good bill with several cosponsors and tons of grassroots support failed to become law that year. The bill ultimately died in the Senate (primarily due to “the M word” - mandate). Some good did come out of the journey that year as Rep. Kenny Bingham (R-Lexington) was able to provide some children in our state with insurance coverage by means of a budget proviso.

The next year, we started over again.

The new bill passed in the Senate first and then easily passed the House. Within weeks, Ryan’s Law became a reality. Both chambers unanimously supported the law and I can still recall seeing the ladies, families, and children in the House Balcony that day.

The work of those three ladies - Lorri, Lisa, and Marcella - had finally enabled hundreds of children in our state to be able to get the services they need to be “mainstreamed” into society. The journey was shared on Lorri’s blog for everyone to follow and others from across the nation were contacting her and her Grassroots Gang.

The ironic beauty in all this was that none of those ladies who led the fight benefited from the new law! How refreshing to see people fight for a cause they believe in when they stand to gain nothing and everyone else stands to gain plenty?

I’ve been a part of some wonderful causes and legislation in my four short years in the General Assembly; but, it’s this journey, these ladies, and Ryan’s Law that will always stay with me.

The CNN Video

Here's the link to the video from World Autism Awareness Day:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/04/01/autism.insurance/#cnnSTCVideo

I don't know how long it will be available.

CNN Coverage of Ryan's Law on World Autism Awareness Day

Mom wins fight for autism insurance
Story Highlights
Most medical insurance policies generally don't cover autism treatment
One lawyer-mom whose son has autism decided to fight for coverage
She wrote a bill requiring insurers to cover treatment, got other parents to help lobby
"Ryan's Law" takes effect in July in South Carolina; 2 other states have similar laws

By Justine Redman
CNN

LEXINGTON, South Carolina (CNN) -- Ryan Unumb just turned 7 years old. He has about 100 words in his vocabulary, even if they are difficult to understand. He's potty trained. He loves playing with water. He follows instructions, he asks for food when he's hungry, and he gives lots of kisses.
He's not where a 7-year-old should be developmentally, but for a child with severe autism, his parents are thrilled with his progress.
Lorri and Dan Unumb attribute these achievements to the 40 hours of intensive therapy Ryan gets every week. Tears streaming down her face, Lorri says they know they're lucky they can afford the team of private therapists who spend all day at their house outside Columbia, South Carolina.
"I've met so many other moms who were doing the best they could, and I just wanted to say to them, 'You know, an hour a week of speech therapy for your child is never going to make him better,' " the mother of three says.
"But I didn't want to tell them what they needed is 40 hours a week of therapy, because there's nothing they can do to buy that."
Nothing they can do because most medical insurance policies generally don't cover autism treatment, and it's too expensive for many parents to afford out of pocket. Ryan's therapy costs between $70,000 and $80,000 a year. That's Lorri Unumb's entire salary.
She and her husband are both lawyers; after Ryan's autism was diagnosed five years ago they sold their house, downsized and sacrificed to cover costs.
"It's not like you read your insurance policy and you can see a specific exclusion," Lorri Unumb says of the early days after Ryan's diagnosis. "We submitted bills, and we'd get denials back that said 'experimental... denied,' or 'provided by a non-licensed provider... denied.' Or sometimes the insurance companies would say 'this therapy is educational in nature, not medical... denied.'"
As a lawyer and a law professor, Unumb decided to do something about it, to force insurance companies in South Carolina to cover autism. Watch more on the Unumbs' fight to change the law on insurance coverage of autism »
She wrote a bill, recruited other parents to help her lobby state legislators, and two years later, got the bill passed. Known as Ryan's Bill, it will go into effect as Ryan's Law in July.
Ryan's Law mandates that insurance companies provide up to $50,000 a year for behavioral therapy up to the age of 16. It also prohibits insurers from refusing other medical care to children because of their autism. It doesn't, however, apply to people or companies who are self-insured, such as the Unumbs.
Similar laws have already been passed in Texas and Indiana, and campaigns to do the same in other states have the support of the advocacy group Autism Speaks.
The health insurance industry argues that so-called "mandates" like this ultimately do more harm than good.
"It's not that we oppose a particular mandate," says Susan Pisano of America's Health Insurance Plans, a Washington-based association that represents health insurers. "We oppose the idea of mandates in general because we think in the end what happens is that health care is less affordable and less accessible when mandates are imposed."
But as for why autism isn't covered in the first place, the industry insists that behavioral therapy is an educational measure, not a medical one, and therefore not its bailiwick.
"I think that it's perfectly understandable that if you are diagnosed with a condition, or a family member is diagnosed with a condition, you want to get services," Pisano says. "Traditionally those services have been provided through early intervention programs for children in the 0-3 age group, and by schools for children who are older."
Pisano says the real issue is one of public policy. "We're seeing around the country, as the number of children along the autism spectrum is increasing and as budgets are being cut back, we see a move to transfer responsibility for some of the services [from the government] to the health care system."
For the Unumbs and many other parents though, the bottom line is that their child's autism was diagnosed by a doctor, not a teacher, and they want the coverage they feel entitled to after years of paying insurance premiums.
Lorri Unumb was so inundated by phone calls from parents of children with autism around the country wanting advice on how they, too, could go up against one of the most powerful industries in the nation and win, that she and her collaborators started holding open workshops to explain how they'd done it.
While admitting that she might not have done it if she'd known how hard it would be, Unumb regularly gives impassioned talks on how to garner grass-roots support, how to lobby state legislators and get signatures on bills.
"If you have a child with autism, you're exhausted all the time. And the last thing in the world that you have time to do is to take on the insurance industry. That's why it's just persisted this way for so long, it's that the very people who have the motivation to get the coverage just can't do it," says Unumb.
But even with Ryan's Bill passed, she cautions, it's not over yet. "I've been contacted by a number of people from around the country who have told me that they're planning to move to South Carolina because of Ryan's Law. That's both gratifying and scary. ... It's gratifying because I love to see as many children as possible take advantage of the new law. It's scary because it hasn't been implemented yet, and it's an insurance policy so there are going to be all kinds of issues with implementation."
Justine Redman is a CNN producer in Washington