The Politics of Autism includes an extensive discussion of insurance and the regulation of autism service providers.
Colleen L. Barry, Andrew J. Epstein, Steven C. Marcus, Alene Kennedy-Hendricks, Molly K. Candon, Ming Xie, and David S. Mandell have an article at Health Affairs titled "Effects Of State Insurance Mandates On Health Care Use And Spending For Autism Spectrum Disorder."
The abstract:
Forty-six states and the District of Columbia have enacted insurance mandates that require commercial insurers to cover treatment for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study examined whether implementing autism mandates altered service use or spending among commercially insured children with ASD. We compared children age twenty-one or younger who were eligible for mandates to children not subject to mandates using 2008–12 claims data from three national insurers. Increases in service use and spending attributable to state mandates were detected for all outcomes. Mandates were associated with a 3.4-percentage-point increase in monthly use and a $77 increase in monthly spending on ASD-specific services. Effects were larger for younger children and increased with the number of years since mandate implementation. These increases suggest that state mandates are an effective tool for broadening access to autism treatment under commercial insurance.From a release by the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health:
"The hope of patient advocates and policymakers was that these insurer mandates would increase care for children with autism, and they seem to have done that—in fact, the impact was even larger than we had expected," says Colleen L. Barry, PhD, MPP, the Fred and Julie Soper Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School.
The results, Barry adds, are important for states that have enacted such mandates to understand their impact, and also helpful for states considering whether to broaden mandates that are already in place. Barry is also affiliated faculty with the Johns Hopkins Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities at the Bloomberg School.
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Recent federal laws including the Affordable Care Act have introduced nationwide coverage mandates, including "parity" mandates requiring that coverage of mental health care be equal to coverage of general health care. But how closely these regulations apply to behavioral therapies for ASDs is still being debated—even litigated—among insurers and patient advocacy groups.
"Concern that children with autism were not able to access services through private insurance even in the context of parity laws was one reason why patient advocates have pushed for these state mandates that apply specifically to autism coverage," Barry says.
