Senate Bill 101

[Guest guest]

While this will primarily benefit children, it does affect older

teens...

Ellen

Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 9:31 AM

Subject: From Dr. Rosenblatt's Office

Dear Patients and Friends:

After several years of testimony, negotiations and navigating the

Illinois political system, the habilitative services bill - the bill

that mandates health insurers in Illinois to cover medically

prescribed treatments such as speech and language, occupational and

physical therapies for children from birth to the age of 19 years -

has been rolled into Senate Bill 101 (House Ammendment 4) and is set

to be voted on in the Senate Rules Committee on Monday, January

12th. It has already passed the House unanimously and will hopefully

make it out of the Rules Committee and come to a vote Monday in the

Senate.

SB 101 eliminates the ability of insurers to deny coverage for

therapies which are not restorative of previously acquired skills.

Far too many of you have had this happen for therapies which would

clearly benefit your children. I was fed up with all of the denials

I received for therapies which I had prescribed and introduced

legislation with the help of the Illinois Chapter of the American

Academy of Pediatrics and Representative Coulson, herself a

former physical therapist. The legislation is based on a similar

bill for which I testified in land back in 2000, but through the

review process and multiple conference calls with supporters and

opponents of the bill, the current version in Illinois is even better

than the one we passed in land years ago.

SB 101 affects the 95% of children with neurological disorders, but

not on the autism spectrum, enabling them to receive appropriate

habilitative interventions. SB 934 was passed last month which

mandates insurance coverage of autism therapies up to $36,000 for

those children on the autism spectrum.

Many of you requested me to notify you when you could do something to

help move this bill along. So here is your opportunity. Call your

state senator and ask him/her to vote in favor of SB 101 on Monday.

You can look up your state senator and his/her contact information at

http://www.ilga.gov/senate/default.asp. It would also help for you

to call members of the Rules Committee to ask that they vote in favor

of letting the bill come for a vote before the entire Senate.

I hope that the passage of SB 101 will enable us to give our children

the full benefits of our medical technology and expertise to help

them to reach their full potential. With this bill, Illinois can be

a shining example for the rest of the country to emulate rather than

merely to ridicule.

Best wishes for a healthy and happy 2009,

Alan I. Rosenblatt, M.D.

Specialist in Neurodevelopmental Pediatrics

--

Office Staff of Alan I. Rosenblatt, M.D.

Specialist in Neurodevelopmental Pediatrics

4801 W. Avenue, Suite 204

Chicago, IL 60646

Tel: 773-481-1818

Fax: 773-481-1919