Aspies For Freedom

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalp...75a10bf5a8

NATIONAL POST
Latest News

ONLINE EXTRA: Our readers on autism ruling, suicide bombing and global warming

National Post

Monday, November 22, 2004


Hypocrisy in Autism Ruling

The Supreme Court of Canada’s recent decision to relieve the provinces of an obligation to publicly fund ABA (Applied Behavioural Analysis), also known as IBI (Intensive Behavioural Intervention), therapy for autism is the latest example of the government’s hypocrisy when it comes to health care funding.
With early and sustained use of these treatment methods, many diagnosed with autism can learn to be self-sufficient and become valuable contributing members of society. However, as a result of the court’s ruling, only the very wealthy can afford to pay out of pocket (upwards of $50,000 per year) for this clinically proven treatment.
In order to fund private therapy, the rest of parents with children diagnosed with autism are forced to sell assets, remortgage their homes, borrow from relatives and extend credit lines to the maximum. Despite various governments’ rhetoric, two-tiered health care seems alive and well in this country.
The Ontario government has responded to this issue by providing limited funding for IBI therapy for diagnosed children up until the age of six. However, due to long waiting lists, many children only make it into the program at a late stage or not at all. After the child reaches age six, parents are on their own again to seek and pay for therapy. Imagine having a child suffering from cancer and then being required to pay privately for chemotherapy once the child reaches a specific age. As another classic example of government hypocrisy, it appears that discrimination based on age is acceptable when it comes to autism.
Although the high incidence of autism (now one in every two hundred births) has huge implications for communities and society as a whole, autism is in fact a medical condition resulting from a neurological disorder and needs to be addressed accordingly by the Ministry of Health.  The short-sightedness in the government’s thinking by restricting funding now will only result in massive additional funding requirements later for increased institutionalization of autistic adults. Similarly, the court’s decision in passing the buck to politicians under the guise that they are the ones responsible for enacting appropriate health care funding legislation only throws the problem back to where it originated.
While we applaud the efforts of MPP Shelley Martel in fighting the Ontario government on behalf of affected families, it seems funding for autism therapy will only move forward when a greater percentage of MPPs become more educated on the issues or are touched directly in some way with autism themselves.
Do we as a presumably caring society sit and wait, or will we become proactive and challenge our lawmakers? As responsible citizens and taxpayers, the choice is ours — we can pay now or pay much more down the road depending on what our priorities are.
Dave and Debbie Rajczak, Burlington, Ont.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/A...nal/Canada

U.S. government pays cost of therapy for autistic children

By MARGARET PHILP
Saturday, November 20, 2004 - Page A11


E-mail this Article E-mail this Article
Print this Article Print this Article  
  Advertisement

They are bitterly disappointed. They are tens of thousands of dollars in debt. And parents who were told by the Supreme Court of Canada yesterday that British Columbia has the right to deny therapy to their autistic children are even threatening to move to the United States, where the government funds autism treatment.

It was a crushing ruling for parents in British Columbia, who will have to dig into their own pockets to cover the steep costs of the intensive one-on-one behavioural therapy that has worked wonders with some children but that the court played down as an "emergent" autism treatment.

"Pierre Elliot Trudeau's vision of a just society died today," said Sabrina Freeman, one of the four sets of parents who launched their court battle against the B.C. government four years ago.

"I'm not talking about autism here. I'm talking about for every single, solitary, powerless minority in Canada, it's open season now.

"Personally, I'm wondering why I live in Canada. I'll have to think about that carefully.

"I might be forced to look at greener pastures. I wanted to change the society here to make it good for people with disabilities, and I failed. So I'm looking at my options."

Dr. Freeman has not abandoned all hope. Although she has written off the B.C. government, she and other parents are turning their sights to Ottawa where they want to lobby the federal government for "some decent disability laws" like those in the United States.

"If I fail there," she said, "there's nothing left for me to do."

She is far from the only one tempted by a U.S. system that while famously denying health care to millions of uninsured Americans, has strong federal legislation that provides publicly funded autism therapy through the schools.

Michael Lewis is the father of an autistic 10-year-old boy whose separate lawsuit against the B.C. government over its failure to fund autism therapy was torpedoed with yesterday's Supreme Court decision.

Mr. Lewis said he knows of "several" families who pulled up stakes in the province and moved south of the border, a move he, too, contemplates.

"After the election in the U.S., all the disgruntled Democrats were going to move to Canada. Well, now all the autistic kids and their families are going to move to America," said Mr. Lewis, who acts as president of the Autism Society of British Columbia.

"I've got to be quite honest. This is something I need to think about. Because I don't care how rich you are, when you're paying $40,000 a year over and above the government funding . . . to provide therapy for your child, that's not an easy task."

British Columbia pays $20,000 a year to cover autism therapies for diagnosed children under 6, and $6,000 for older children. But the cost of providing therapy at least 30 hours a week -- the minimum time that research shows to make a difference -- often runs tens of thousands of dollars more.

Just ask Justin Himmelright. To pay for the four therapists who work with his son, Griffen, six days a week, Mr. Himmelright of Maple Ridge, B.C., works at B.C. Hydro by day and as a consultant by night. And his wife has a full-time job. Even so, the couple has dipped into Mr. Himmelright's 80-year-old grandmother's retirement savings.

Mr. Himmelright, who is also suing the provincial government, expects the province to roll back the "meagre" funding program now in place.

Outside British Columbia, the Supreme Court ruling has thrown a wet blanket on the lawsuits and human-rights challenges being waged against provincial governments, such as Ontario.

But lawyers say there are important distinctions between these cases and the B.C. case that will allow them to sidestep the Supreme Court ruling when they make their arguments.

For one, Ontario provides an $80-million program that funds autism therapy for hundreds of children, a program plagued by long waiting lists and a history of mismanaged funds and lax government oversight. Many of the Ontario parents are suing over the province's policy that cuts off funding when children reach age 6.

In contrast, the B.C. parents were challenging their government's failure to put a program in place (the current one did not exist when their case was launched).

Still, the uphill battle for public funding to cover the cost of therapy remains steep.

"People are making such inherently wrong decisions. How the Ontario government and the B.C. government can watch people suffer while they have the power to do something completely evades me," said Brenda Deskin, whose family is one of 29 awaiting a court ruling in Ontario regarding the over-age-six threshold.

"It's just gut-wrenching. The impact it's going to have on these [B.C.] children and these families is too horrible to even conceive right now."