Comments about ‘Utah lawmakers explore Medicaid waiver for children with autism’

Do we help some or none? We have to start somewhere. When the first legislation was introduced two years ago, legislators complained that it shouldn't be an insurance issue, but rather individuals with autism should be helped through medicaid. Now there's a medicaid bill and they complain that if we can't help one, we shouldn't help any because that wouldn't be fair, would it? We either pay now by treating these individuals, or pay later to the tune of $3 million over an autistic individual's lifetime (Harvard, 2007). New Utah numbers, prevalence data, will be coming out in the upcoming months which are stunning and further reiterate this problem in which our legislators keep ignoring. When will we start taking autism seriously?

My question is if the state budget is so slim this year, how can we afford a new spending program?