Previous posts have
described problems with
California's transition of ASD children from
Healthy Families to Medi-Cal. At
The San Francisco Chronicle, Laura Shumaker writes:
A Senate subcommittee last week proposed a $50 million solution to temporarily address the lack of coverage for ABA under Medi-Cal . The new proposal would appropriate $50 million to make sure Medi-Cal children with autism are able to receive applied behavioral analysis treatment – known as ABA therapy — through the end of 2013. The assumption is that ABA therapy will be available as an essential health benefit under the Affordable Care Act starting in 2014.
...
Medi-Cal covers autism services through contracted regional centers around the state, but the eligibility criteria to receive ABA therapy is much more stringent than under the Healthy Families plan. An estimated 75% of children who were eligible under Healthy Families would not qualify for the same services under Medi-Cal. The percentage who do qualify may be even lower than 25%, according to Melissa Cortez-Roth, legislative advocate for Autism Speaks.”Not everyone who qualifies for Healthy Families who will be losing coverage qualifies for coverage at a regional center,” Cortez-Roth said. “Only a fraction of those children qualify for the regional centers.”
Toby Douglas, director of the Department of Health Care Services that has orchestrated the Healthy Families transition, said the Senate subcommittee’s plan might be difficult to implement.”We do just want to raise a couple concerns,” Douglas said. “First of all, we are concerned about the fiscal estimate. Given that this needs to be built into the plans, this would have to be built into the plans’ rates. …We are concerned it may underestimate the cost for our plans.” The second concern, Douglas said, is timing. “Any change to our plans requires contractual changes, as well as building in the rates,” Douglas said. “And we need to get approval from our federal partners, including amendments to our 1115 waiver to add this benefit, which will take several months.” Douglas said July 1 was not “a realistic implementation date.”
