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April 3, 2008
Christina V. Mills
While there is little to no evidence of African American children having autism at a higher rate than children of other ethnicities, African American parents with autistic children often face other challenges.
For example, certain symptoms associated with autism, such as delayed language development and problems handling daily life tasks, are more severe in African American individuals with autism than in Caucasians1.
In addition, African Americans typically have a lower rate of health care coverage than do Caucasians and other ethnic groups. When facing chronic condition from diabetes to autism, the greatest challenge for the African American community as a whole is maintaining the cost of long-term care.
As a result, many African American families have few resources to provide early intervention and continuing treatment to their autistic children – treatment that can add up to the high tens of thousands each year.
Yet even for those with full health care coverage, many health insurance companies refuse to acknowledge treatment for autism as health care and do not cover it. And for those who attempt to get health insurance for their child after she is diagnosed with autism, they may not get it at all (even though, according to them, it requires no health care treatments).
So what is a parent to do? Even if you don’t live in one of the 16 states that have already passed bills that require insurance companies to cover and reimburse treatment for children with autism you are not out of luck. Getting coverage in your state is possible. But with a lot of work.
I am personally impassioned by the work of Lorri Unumb in passing Ryan’s Law in South Carolina, which mandates that health insurance companies to cover autism. By putting herself in the midst of her government by writing a bill herself, she created change that many of us view as impossible.
Her story proves to me that hope is never lost even in the most difficult of situations. However, the pressure is on all of us to take our passions into our own hands, without waiting on the government to do it for us.
And with the constant messages to African Americans that we must sit back and wait for the government to “help” us, Unumb’s actions send a powerful message that waiting for “help” is precisely what we should not do.
While progress such as Ryan’s Law may be long coming, if we all take the kind of action that Unumb has, the collective effort will provide the long awaited wake up call to insurance companies across the nation, and autism will receive the acknowledgment, treatment, and research that it deserves.
States with Insurance Currently Covering Autism:
California
Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Montana
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
Tennessee
Virginia
1 http://www.child-autism-parent-cafe.com/african-americans-and-autism.html
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