End Health Insurance Discrimination Against People With Autism In New York.

[Guest guest]

The Schafer Autism Report TMACTION ALERT!

End Health Insurance Discrimination Against People With Autism In New York. Contact Your Elected Representatives In AlbanyAnd Tell Them To Sponsor A 699 and S784.

A-Champ Action Alert

TAKE ACTION!

New York State has a slate of bills pending in the Assembly and Senate that could have serious impacts on families contending with autism, first and foremost among them are two bills that would prohibit insurance companies from denying medical care and therapy to our kids.

We have all been there. Speech therapy denied, MRIs denied, EEGs denied, ABA denied, Gastro-intestinal treatment denied, and on and on, in a brutal litany of injustice. Assembly Bill A 699 introduced by Assemblymember Audrey Pheffer of Queens, and the identical Senate Bill S784 introduced by Senator Fuschillo of Nassau County will put laws in place to end it.The bills were introduced two years ago, but parent advocates weren’t quite able to overcome the resistance of the insurance lobby. It’s time to try again, but this time we can’t let up. This is an election year and we need to let our elected representatives know that they must do the right thing and stop the overt

discrimination against our kids, and the unconscionable denial of medical care while taking premiums out of every paycheck. We need to remind them that we vote, and so do our families, friends and neighbors. Last year we learned that a determined group of active citizens can take on the $6 trillion pharmaceutical industry and their allies in the medical trade associations and beat them at their own game when we passed legislation limiting the use of mercury in vaccines in New York. We had no money or professional lobbyists, but we did have truth on our side and, more to the point, thousands of concerned citizens, mostly parents, willing to pick up a pen, make a phone call, fire up the fax machine or visit their elected representatives and insist that they do the right thing. And we need to do that again this year. Mike , a parent of a child on the spectrum from the Albany area, met recently with highly-ranked members of the Assembly who told him that if this bill is going to pass they need to hear from their constituents that this is something important to them. Mike isn’t a political insider, just a parent like us who is trying to do the right thing for our kids. We have heard the same thing from many other elected officials, if they are going to take on the multi-trillion dollar insurance industry they must have support at home they can count on, and it is up to us to provide it for them. So act now. Clicking of the link below to the A-CHAMP website where you can send an email message directly to your own legislators and the legislators in key positions to make this law happen.

Be A-CHAMP FOR CHILDREN

http://tinyurl.com/ectbu

Tuesday, February 21, 2006 Vol. 10 No. 30.1