Rep. Nile Dillmore, D-Wichita
The debate over whether to require health insurers to cover autism came to an abrupt end Wednesday.
An effort to pull House Bill 2367 from the House Insurance Committee and send it to the floor for debate needed 70 votes to proceed. It got 60.
“It got whacked,” said Rep. Nile Dillmore, D-Wichita, a key supporter of the initiative.
“The insurance lobby didn’t a do better job in presenting their side than we did in presenting ours,” Dillmore said. “But you know what? We’ll use the interim to keep educating folks and next year, we’ll see how many more (legislators) we can get to see the light. This isn’t going away.”
HB 2367 would have required state-regulated health plans to cover the diagnosis and treatment of autism, a neurological disorder that interferes with a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others.
Early interventions — behavior, speech and occupational therapies — have been shown to reduce the effects of the disorder. There is no known cure.
As many as one in 150 children are thought to have autism.
The state’s insurance lobby opposed the bill, warning that it would drive up premium costs, which, in turn, would force some employers to drop their coverage.
“I think the House took the responsible course of action today,” said Brad Smoot, legislative counsel for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas. “This was a complicated bill that had a lot of problems and a lot of potential implications for employers and people covered by health insurance.”
In earlier testimony before the Senate insurance committee, insurance lobbyists predicted the bill would cause individual and small-group premiums to increase by 2.5 percent to 3 percent.
The bill’s supporters accused the lobbyists of spreading false information.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Mike Wasmer, a member of the state’s Autism Task Force. “Legislators take whatever information the insurance lobby gives them at face value, but they don’t have the data to back up what they’re saying — and they don’t have it because it isn’t there.”
A task force analysis pegged the increase in premiums at less than 1 percent.
“We’ll regroup and come back next year,” Wasmer said.
Sen. Ruth Teichman, R-Stafford
A twin bill to HB 2367 stalled in the Senate Financial Institutions and Insurance Committee.
“I have a lot of sympathy for families of children with autism and I’m not at all opposed to working with them,” said the committee’s chairwoman, Sen. Ruth Teichman, R-Stafford. “But what we do has to be done right. This bill had too many unanswered questions.”
-Dave Ranney is a staff writer for KHI News Service, which specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. He can be reached at dranney@khi.org or at 785-233-5443, ext. 128.