Have you heard about the Autism Insurance Bill being proposed in the Arizona State Legislature? If not, then listen up – this has the potential to be an extremely important piece of legislation.. Maybe even life-changing for many families.

I can speak from experience on this one. When I left my job at a Fortune 500 company to go into business for myself, health insurance was one of the most challenging pieces to put into place. We wanted to include Calvin on our family insurance plan, and we were willing to pay for his premium. "Heck, we thought, why should the State be required to pay for his doctor's visits?"

Well, we eventually found one company who would insure Calvin on our plan, but with an exclusion rider so that any care which could conceivably be connected to autism would NOT be covered. We were out of options, so we accepted. However, when the dust settled and we actually had a policy in place, they had excluded Calvin entirely! So the State of Arizona has been providing his health insurance coverage ever since – not by choice, but by necessity.

This law will not only require insurance companies to provide coverage for "non-autism" treatments, it will also give some help for the very real, very necessary, and sometimes very expensive treatments and therapies we've come to rely on to improve the quality of Calvin's (and our family's) life.

Please visit http://www.azautisminsurance.org to learn more about it, or to find the contact information for your district's senator and representatives.