Response to A-CHAMP Questionnaire

[Guest guest]

A-CHAMP just received responses to our candidates questionnaire from which are posted below. We have also received responses from Senator Biden and Senator Obama which you can read at the A-CHAMP website, www.a-champ.org. Please feel free to distribute to anyone, anywhere, anyhow. 1. Will you fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act? Education is America’s sturdiest ladder of opportunity, but for many of the more than 5 million school-age children with disabilities, that ladder is missing several rungs. With IDEA, Congress made a commitment to America’s children. Having a disability should not stand in the way of a child receiving a quality education in the least restrictive setting. But the federal government has not lived up to its responsibilities, funding less than half its share. I support a steady path toward fully funding the federal share of special education costs and will enforce the right to receive a free and appropriate education in schools that are fully accessible – starting with quality early childhood education that is inclusive of all children, regardless of disability or their learning style, and continuing with individualized education programs when requested and classroom materials and technology that are accessible to all students. Additionally, child care providers need training to help them recognize when additional services might be needed and where those community resources are. I have repeatedly voted to fully fund special education and to make the funding mandatory, and I oppose efforts to roll back key provisions of IDEA. It is time that children with disabilities receive the quality education they deserve. 2. Do you believe that the Combating Autism Act provides enough money to find the cause, or causes, of autism and effective treatments? While Congress took an important step last year by dedicating more than $900 million to address autism over the next five years, more can and must be done. Resources for research should be a central part of future autism initiatives. 3. How much funding will you request to study potential environmental triggers of autism? As president, I will issue an all-hands-on deck research challenge and dedicate the needed resources to unravel autism’s mysteries and follow wherever the science takes us. 4. Do you believe there is an autism epidemic in the United States? Autism and autism spectrum disorders affect an astonishing one in 150 children. More children than ever before – a 700 percent increase over the last decade – are being classified as having an autism spectrum disorder. I believe that we must learn more about why the number of children diagnosed with autism and autism spectrum disorders has been growing. 5. What will you do to stop health insurers from

discriminating against people with autism and their families? I will require insurers to keep plans open to everyone and charge fair premiums, regardless of preexisting conditions, medical history, and other characteristics. No longer will insurance companies be able to game the system to cover only healthy people. Several states – including New Jersey, New York, and Washington – have led the way on similar community rating and guaranteed issue reforms. In addition, new national standards will ensure that all health insurance policies

offer preventive and chronic care with minimal cost-sharing. 6. What will you do to assure that health insurers pay for promising new treatments and behavioral therapy? Our health care system is predominantly fee-for-service: providers are paid for each treatment, regardless of its necessity or quality. For example, a hospital that makes a medical error is often paid for

the error and then paid again to fix it. Our system should pay for results, rewarding better, more efficient care. As part of my proposal to transform our health care system and guarantee quality, affordable health care for every American, Medicare, my new Health Care Markets and other government programs will lead the way by paying higher rates to plans and providers that provide the very best care and penalizing plans that fail to meet critical, quantifiable goals. Only a small fraction — likely less than 0.1 percent —

of each health care dollar is currently devoted to systematic research and assessment of the comparative effectiveness of various diagnostic and therapeutic options. I will establish a non-profit or public organization – possibly within the Institutes of Medicine – to research the best methods of providing care, drawing upon data from Medicare, Health Care Markets and medical experts from across the nation. It will test devices and drugs head-to-head to see which work best and for whom. This new organization will quickly and widely disseminate its unbiased, scientific findings to physicians and patients. Though we have some of the best health care technology in the world, effective new treatments can take years to be widely adopted. For example, until recently, many patients did not receive beta blockers after heart attacks even though they are cheap and highly effective. Similarly, doctors sometimes prescribe name brand drugs despite the availability of equally effective, less expensive generic drugs. As new diagnostics, procedures and drugs are introduced, my new objective medical research organization will help doctors make sense of what works best. Government programs will offer incentives for the use of evidence-based care and treatments. 7. Do you think vaccines should be investigated as a possible cause of autism? We need to step up our research efforts to find the causes of autism, as well as better treatments. And that research must be transparent, accountable, open to all possibilities and driven by science. 8. What will you do to protect Americans, especially young children and pregnant women, from exposure to mercury through vaccines? I will take all necessary steps to make sure that vaccines are as safe as possible. We must discontinue the use of potentially dangerous additives, including mercury, in vaccines. 9. What will you do to provide for the lifetime care that 250,000 to 500,000 current children with autism will need in the future? Government education services for people with disabilities end at age 21, even though the need does not, especially for many of those with autism. Thus, families are left to care for their adult children with disabilities largely on their own. I will work to develop ongoing adult education and vocational and recreational programs for those with autism. My plans for reforming the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and strengthening federal housing policy will expand the supply of affordable supportive housing for people with disabilities, including adults living with autism. 10. Would you support a large-scale federal study of the differences in health outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups? As president, I will direct my Secretary of Health and Human Services and my Directors of the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health to follow where science takes us and to determine which studies to undertake based on scientific evidence. 11. Would you support a federal right for families and individuals to choose for themselves which vaccines they will use? I support efforts to ensure the safety of America’s vaccines and to educate families and health care providers about vaccine options. 12. Are you satisfied that the federal vaccine approval process is free of conflicts of interests, transparent and rigorous? Drug companies responsible for testing drugs prior to FDA approval have an inherent conflict of interest between their desire to profit from new treatments and the public’s interest in ensuring safety and efficacy. I will move toward requiring fully independent testing of drugs, including the testing of drugs compared to existing alternatives. Information about comparative effectiveness would be required to be made available to the FDA and to the public.