Hillary Clinton has announced her latest healthcare initiative, this one aimed at improving screening, treatment and research for autism, a social learning disability that is increasingly affecting children around the U.S.
Clinton, who plans to detail her plan during a town hall in Iowa Tuesday afternoon, is promising that should voters elect her president this year, she would implement an autism screening campaign especially targeting low-income children, pressure states to require insurers to cover autism services and authorize a first-ever study on autism among adults.
The Democratic front-runner is announcing her autism proposal amid heightened anxiety about the condition, after federal statistics released in November indicated a dramatic increase in 2014, although some of the spike could be attributed to a change in how the data were collected.
The prevalence of autism in children ages three-17 rose about 80 percent from 2011-13 to 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics. Researchers now estimate that one in 45 children in the U.S. is affected by the condition.
Some autism advocates applauded her plan, including Autism Advocacy Network President Ari Ne’eman, who called it a “landmark set of proposals from a presidential candidate.”
“One of the areas we found particularly of praise in this plan and something missing from the conversation in the past … is a focus on services,” Ne’eman said. “Typically when the conversation on autism occurs, it’s filtered very heavily around discussion on causation and that leaves out the parts of the discussion that are most important for autistic people and our families.”
Clinton’s plan would encourage all states to set up tax-deferred savings accounts for people with disabilities, something enabled under the federal ABLE Act, a bill from Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., that Congress passed in 2014. Casey applauded the proposal, noting that Clinton is the only presidential candidate so far to suggest a policy approach to combat autism.
“I don’t think you’ll see anything from any other candidate that is this substantive on a very challenging problem for this country,” Casey said.
Clinton also has detailed how she would approach some other big healthcare problems, including the high cost of prescription drugs and Alzheimer’s disease.
