Governments Treating Autism: How Far Should the State Go to Pay for Developmental Disorder Interventions?

In a story out of California, a mother caught her child's autism very early, shortly after birth. Today, the child is doing quite well, making breakthrough after breakthrough, and he may be on track to overcome his autism for the most part by the time he reaches school.

To do this, the state of California has been paying $70,000 a year: for 36 hours of work per week by graduate students who come in every day to work with the boy; for outside therapists to treat him; and for some special interventions: repetitive motion, rewards like praise and treats, swinging and other forms of play that get the child excited, and special rewards when certain benchmarks are made - such as making sounds that can be put together into language.

It is wonderful that autism treatment has advanced to the point that, through early and consistent intervention, babies who are highly at risk can be turned around at that early phase. But with the sudden enormous apparent epidemic of autistic children, how long can any state sustain the cost of treatment for these children when insurance will not pay for it (and most won't)?

More importantly, do interventions for these children take money from other, more worthy programs? And can the parents be trained to use these interventions instead, freeing up funding for other programs?

Train-the-Parent Instead?

Right now, autism costs us all $90 billion a year, and that number is expected to double in a decade. Why? No one really knows. Some say it's because of food and immunization allergies, or geek-marrying-geek syndrome, or indigo children, or pollution. Most likely, though, it is primarily because we are getting increasingly good at identifying borderline cases, and properly diagnosing cases that once were categorized as mental retardation or other issues.