so what is autism covered under? a teaching? or a medical treatment?
from what I have read(limited) it appears more of a training or teaching less a medical/medicated.....and for that matter I am going to say the schools use all these interventions to teach/control ALL kids....
does autism need more research----ABSOLUTELY.....should the government be in charge of that and funding?
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Resolution 23-10, sponsored by Legislature Santabarbara, D-Rotterdam, and co-sponsored by Susan Savage, D-Niskayuna, and Brian Gordon, D-Niskayuna, would encourage that state Assembly bill 6888-B and Senate Bill 6123 be supported by the county and encourage that the State Legislature approve the legislation. The two bills would amend NYS Insurance Law to require health insurance coverage for the diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders. The state legislation would ensure that every policy, group policy, and or medical indemnity, hospital service or heath service corporation would provide coverage for the diagnosis and treatment of the disorder across the spectrum of autism, according to information from the county........>>>>.........>>>>............http://www.spotlightnews.com/news/view_news.php?news_id=1265657209
How often do we hear about insurance companies screwing someone over a procedure or medication? In the case of these families EVERY part of their child's care is not covered. That is unacceptable. If you disagree you simply have no heart. You say that the rate of autism diagnoses are higher than ever, well excuse me if science has evolved to classify disorders. There was a time people used to drop dead, then they discovered cancer, then they started working towards cures. That's what's going on here. Should we not allow the science process to go on and just let the kids die without medical care?
You're missing the point. It's about the MANDATE! If the State were to mandate coverage, is it funded or unfunded? Will the taxpayer end up footing a portion of the mandate? Will my premiums go up?
Oh, BTW, how often do you hear about insurance paying for life saving procedures? YA DON'T. Tell me where the money comes from to run television commercials about Autism? Commercials are not cheap. Angelo would have to sell a lot of cheese to pay for a T.V. commercial. The psychiatry industry stands to make a boat load of money if states start mandating this coverage, I’m sure they could pony up some money to pay for this marketing blitz, knowing the potential return on investment.
You make the classic big government liberal argument. By demonizing the "big business" insurance companies and screaming "it's for the kids", so now anybody that questions this state mandate is will be painted as a heartless, child hating, big business loving monster.
What's the next mandate? Covering "sex addiction" therapy? The type Tiger Woods is receiving.
Greeny, you can spin and twist my words any way you choose, but my point, that a few are obviously avoiding, is what exactly is it that A.S. has done for the 'masses'? For ALL of his constituents? For ALL of the people (reps and cons) who voted and helped him get into what has now become his bully pulpit!
What about addressing our skyrocketing higher taxes in the towns he represents? What about metrofraud? what about DSS fraud? What about police consolidation? What about jobs? What about patronage jobs? and the list goes on.....
He appears to be concerned with the quality of life for himself and the few, forgetting that he was elected to address the quality of life and trying to enhance it for ALL OF HIS CONSTITUENTS!
He clearly has failed as 'the people's' representative! He obviously switched parties cause he knew he had a better chance of getting 'his' legislation passed as a dem. So tell me that is not self serving? IMHO
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Bumble, by what has AS done for "the masses" I assume you mean what has he done for you. I am not a liberal democrat, not even a democract at all. I'm against Obamacare. And I don't think insurance companies are evil. However, I do think there are times when the government needs to do the right thing to ensure the health of the general public. Perhaps you believe the government shouldn't prohibit lead paint, asbestos, or regulate drugs to make sure they don't harm people. If that is the case , and care only about I guess we have two choices: make insurance companies cover therapy and treatments now so people might get integrated with society later in life and also get the physical treatment that is necessary to diminish future emergencies. Or, I guess we can forgo that and let these people go to county hospitals because they are uninsured, and the taxpayers can pay for the emergency care for all the physical ailments. And of course medicaid/medicare and welfare can pay for the other types of care such as therapy or for housing in resident facilities. Something tells me AS's route is cheaper in the long run. Or is your ultimate position that we shouldn't help these kids now or in the future and should just let these people die? Survival of the fittest?
I don't know AS, but I'm glad he's looking out for the thousands of families throughout the county and state. You and I are lucky that we don't have kids suffering from autism. But the disorder can strike any of us, and I'd hope that if god forbid one of my family members is diagnosed with autism that they will be able to get the help they deserve. This has the potential to affect everyone and because of that AS is serving us all.
Greeny ~ I think the point was that Angelo IS a liberal Dem. I think everyone can respect his determination to advocate for autism and push for mandates on schools, insurance companies and taxpayer funded research ~ but we don't have to agree.
35% of autism research in the US comes from private resources ~ do the research and you will find an inverse relationship to private funding sources and increase in taxpayer funded mandates ~ in other words ~ you'll get my donation and prayers if I'm allowed to give it to you out of the goodness of my heart ~ if you take it from my hand you'll get resentment.
For parents of children with autism ~ life must be very difficult. I am told that AS will not be running for re-election for any office ~ as he considers his job at home more important than any election.
Techical point: Autism is most certainly not a "disease" - it's a condition, or a disorder. People can die from "diseases" - you can't die from a "condition" or "disorder"
Quoted Text
The defining characteristics of autism spectrum disorders are qualitative impairments of social communication and interaction, along with restricted and repetitive activities and interests. Individual symptoms occur in the general population and appear not to associate highly, without a sharp line separating pathological severity from common traits.[9] Other aspects of ASD, such as atypical eating, are also common but are not essential for diagnosis; they can affect the individual or the family.
Are you guys that partisan that you can't admit this is a good thing? I don't understand how this is a political issue, why does he being a democrat have anything to do with this? If he hadn't switched would you be supporting this? I don't like that he switched parties either, but to hold that against families is below the belt...
Bumble, by what has AS done for "the masses" I assume you mean what has he done for you.
Please don't assume anything! Nor put words in my mouth or twist them. It's not what he has done 'just for me'. Please, give me a break.
The point is, and again everyone seems to be avoiding this issue, is that he is an elected official. And I can assure you that the people who voted him into office did so believing that he would represent ALL of us and the quality of life for ALL of us! I don't believe he even once mentioned that legislation for autism was going to be his primary goal if elected. Then to add insult to injury, he switches parties in mid stream since he knew he had a better chance as a dem than a rep.
How did Timothy's law come into existence? Did the parents run for office and make it their bully pulpit? No they didn't. However, they garnered enough support and stood before the legislature an told their story. THAT is how it's done OUT of the political realm.
Autism is not the issue here. That would be another subject all of it's own. The issue here is that an elected official, who was elected and supported by thousands, appears to have just 'one' issue on his mind! And an issue he never campaigned on. K?
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Are you guys that partisan that you can't admit this is a good thing? I don't understand how this is a political issue, why does he being a democrat have anything to do with this? If he hadn't switched would you be supporting this? I don't like that he switched parties either, but to hold that against families is below the belt...
WE'RE MAKING IT POLITICAL! It's a politician who is personally affected by this issue that is using the power that the people granted him at the polls on election day, to strap us with another cost through mandate. And if he hadn't switched parties, I would be calling him the RINO he proved to be after his bottle ban legislation. The two pieces of legislation he proposed were personal in nature. If he wants to be a leader in finding a cure for the disease autism, he should start a foundation. That would be admirable. I am truly sympathetic to his situation. But to use his position in government? During his campaign, I can't recall once him running on a platform of combating autism with mandates and regulations.
N.Y. Ins. Law § 3221(l)(5)(A) (McKinney 2000), regulating policies issued by commercial insurers, requires that insurers make specified mental health coverage available in group policies covering in-patient hospital care:
Every insurer delivering a group policy or issuing a group policy for delivery, in this state, which provides coverage for inpatient hospital care must make available, and if requested by policyholder provide, coverage for the diagnosis and treatment of mental, nervous or emotional disorders or ailments, however defined in such policy, at least equal to the following: (i) with respect to benefits based upon confinement as an inpatient in a hospital as defined by subdivision ten of section 1.03 of the mental hygiene law, such benefits may be limited to not less than thirty days of active treatment in any calendar year; (ii) with respect to benefits for outpatient care provided in a facility issued an operating certificate by the commissioner of mental hygiene pursuant to the provisions of article thirty-one of the mental hygiene law, or in a facility operated by the department of mental hygiene, or by a psychiatrist or psychologist licensed to practice in this state or a professional corporation or university faculty practice corporation thereof, such benefits may be limited to not less than seven hundred dollars in any calendar year.
As a disorder....why would the government have to get involved.....are there medications not covered? Physical therapy? Occupational therapy? speech therapy?
what specific things do you want covered?----the pain of having child with the disorder? unfortunately somethings just dont come out in the wash......
Is it so that the public schools will get a specific amount of $ allocated to them per autistic child for their 'treatment'.......?
guess what this is where you entrepreneurs come in handy.....open your own autistic school, it will be rated WAY higher than that of public schools.....JMHO
BTW get the government in on the research via DARPA........
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Start a foundation. Get donations. But there is obviously already coverage under 'mental disorders'. We don't have to give it a new name all of it's own and add mandates special for it!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
These are a few of the changes proposed on Tuesday by doctors charged with revising psychiatry’s encyclopedia of mental disorders, the guidebook that largely determines where society draws the line between normal and not normal, between eccentricity and illness, between self-indulgence and self-destruction — and, by extension, when and how patients should be treated.
The eagerly awaited revisions — to be published, if adopted, in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, due in 2013 — would be the first in a decade.
For months they have been the subject of intense speculation and lobbying by advocacy groups, and some proposed changes have already been widely discussed — including folding the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome into a broader category, autism spectrum disorder.
But others, including a proposed alternative for bipolar disorder in many children, were unveiled on Tuesday. Experts said the recommendations, posted online at DSM5.org for public comment, could bring rapid change in several areas.
“Anything you put in that book, any little change you make, has huge implications not only for psychiatry but for pharmaceutical marketing, research, for the legal system, for who’s considered to be normal or not, for who’s considered disabled,” said Dr. Michael First, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who edited the fourth edition of the manual but is not involved in the fifth.
“And it has huge implications for stigma,” Dr. First continued, “because the more disorders you put in, the more people get labels, and the higher the risk that some get inappropriate treatment.”
One significant change would be adding a childhood disorder called temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria, a recommendation that grew out of recent findings that many wildly aggressive, irritable children who have been given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder do not have it.
The misdiagnosis led many children to be given powerful antipsychotic drugs, which have serious side effects, including metabolic changes.
“The treatment of bipolar disorder is meds first, meds second and meds third,” said Dr. Jack McClellan, a psychiatrist at the University of Washington who is not working on the manual. “Whereas if these kids have a behavior disorder, then behavioral treatment should be considered the primary treatment.”
Some diagnoses of bipolar disorder have been in children as young as 2, and there have been widespread reports that doctors promoting the diagnosis received consulting and speaking fees from the makers of the drugs.
In a conference call on Tuesday, Dr. David Shaffer, a child psychiatrist at Columbia, said he and his colleagues on the panel working on the manual “wanted to come up with a diagnosis that captures the behavioral disturbance and mood upset, and hope the people contemplating a diagnosis of bipolar for these patients would think again.”
Experts gave the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the manual, predictably mixed reviews. Some were relieved that the task force working on the manual — which includes neurologists and psychologists as well as psychiatrists — had revised the previous version rather than trying to rewrite it.
Others criticized the authors, saying many diagnoses in the manual would still lack a rigorous scientific basis.
The good news, said Edward Shorter, a historian of psychiatry who has been critical of the manual, is that most patients will be spared the confusion of a changed diagnosis. But “the bad news,” he added, “is that the scientific status of the main diseases in previous editions of the D.S.M. — the keystones of the vault of psychiatry — is fragile.”
To more completely characterize all patients, the authors propose using measures of severity, from mild to severe, and ratings of symptoms, like anxiety, that are found as often with personality disorders as with depression.
“In the current version of the manual, people either meet the threshold by having a certain number of symptoms, or they don’t,” said Dr. Darrel A. Regier, the psychiatric association’s research director and, with Dr. David J. Kupfer of the University of Pittsburgh, the co-chairman of the task force. “But often that doesn’t fit reality. Someone with schizophrenia might have symptoms of insomnia, of anxiety; these aren’t the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, but they affect the patient’s life, and we’d like to have a standard way of measuring them.”
In a conference call on Tuesday, Dr. Regier, Dr. Kupfer and several other members of the task force outlined their favored revisions. The task force favored making semantic changes that some psychiatrists have long argued for, trading the term “mental retardation” for “intellectual disability,” for instance, and “substance abuse” for “addiction.”
One of the most controversial proposals was to identify “risk syndromes,” that is, a risk of developing a disorder like schizophrenia or dementia. Studies of teenagers identified as at high risk of developing psychosis, for instance, find that 70 percent or more in fact do not come down with the disorder.
“I completely understand the idea of trying to catch something early,” Dr. First said, “but there’s a huge potential that many unusual, semi-deviant, creative kids could fall under this umbrella and carry this label for the rest of their lives.”
Dr. William T. Carpenter, a psychiatrist at the University of Maryland and part of the group proposing the idea, said it needed more testing. “Concerns about stigma and excessive treatment must be there,” he said. “But keep in mind that these are individuals seeking help, who have distress, and the question is, What’s wrong with them?”
The panel proposed adding several disorders with a high likelihood of entering the pop vernacular. One, a new description of sex addiction, is “hypersexuality,” which, in part, is when “a great deal of time is consumed by sexual fantasies and urges; and in planning for and engaging in sexual behavior.”
Another is “binge eating disorder,” defined as at least one binge a week for three months — eating platefuls of food, fast, and to the point of discomfort — accompanied by severe guilt and plunges in mood.
“This is not the normative overeating that we all do, by any means,” said Dr. B. Timothy Walsh, a psychiatrist at Columbia and the New York State Psychiatric Institute who is working on the manual. “It involves much more loss of control, more distress, deeper feelings of guilt and unhappiness.”
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It's a politician who is personally affected by this issue that is using the power that the people granted him at the polls on election day, to strap us with another cost through mandate. And if he hadn't switched parties, I would be calling him the RINO he proved to be after his bottle ban legislation. The two pieces of legislation he proposed were personal in nature. If he wants to be a leader in finding a cure for the disease autism, he should start a foundation. That would be admirable. I am truly sympathetic to his situation. But to use his position in government? During his campaign, I can't recall once him running on a platform of combating autism with mandates and regulations.
