LEGISLATIVE UPDATE - GEORGIA

[Guest guest]

Dear Parents and loved ones of autistic children and children within the

autistic spectrum:

Your children need your help.

A bill will be introduced this session by Reps. Mark Burkhalter and Rich

Golick, which would require insurance companies to provide benefits for

children within the autistic spectrum.

It is very important that you all become involved in some way so that we

show legislators that our children have powerful allies who will be very

upset if they ignore the needs of our children and be very appreciative if

they vote to give our children a chance at a better life. Those allies are

us...the parents, the grandparents, and others who love an autistic person.

Participating in this bill will take up very little of your time and energy,

but it is crucial that we all realize that someone else is not going to work

on the behalf of our children. If we don't do it..nobody else will.

Here is what you can do:

*E-mail me at theclaw@... or autismfunding@.... We need a

mailing list so that we can keep everybody updated and mobilize when the

time comes.

*Take the time to bring yourself and your child to the capital on the day

the bill is introduced. It will take no more than 3 hours of your time and

will probably be what makes or breaks this bill. This is crucial and no

matter how busy your schedule it, nothing is more important than obtaining

benefits for our children so that we can afford to give them the therapies

they need. As most of you know, currently, most insurance companies deny

treatments for our children simply because they are autistic. We will let

you know a day or two in advance when the bill will be introduced.

Unfortunately, that is all the notice we get.

*Get ready to send us a particularly adorable picture of your child, by

either e-mail (easy and fast) or snail mail (either an original or a color

copy)so that we can show them that autism is not a nameless and faceless

issue..it is about real, beautiful children who need help.

*Get info from us on the bill so that you can call your representatives and

senators and tell them (at length!) what our children and our families go

through and the fact that despite the fact that we have paid premiums for

years, our insurance companies refuse to pay for any of their treatment. Let

them know that our children have a chance at a happy and productive life and

they deserve this chance, just as people with parkinsons or epilepsy deserve

treatment for their neurological conditions. One insurance lobbyist told me

that a large group of HMO's will oppose our efforts because " its all about

money " . Let's show them that it's not all about money..it's about children.

*Send out as many letters as you can to our legislators asking them to help

our children. A mail merge would be the easiest. Each letter must be

personalized, but the content can be the same. Rather than sending them

individually through the post, if you send more than 10, you might want to

send a package of individually addressed letters to us and we can distribute

them at the capital. We don't mind doing the sorting and delivering. Just

write as many as you can to as many legislators as possible. It is

important to send a photo of your child with each letter to personalize

it...If you have a color scanner and copier, you can take a really nice

photo, scan it and just print out a bunch of copies.

Do any of these things you can...and as many of them as you can. It will be

well worth the effort.

Just write me and I will give you more info and the important talking

points. I want to create a mail list so I can get us all in sync.

Please take the time to do this...in the time it takes to go to do grocery

shopping, you could change your child's life.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this letter and helping pass

this bill into law.

Sincerely,

Donna Galler