Jada's Covered

I'm happy to announce that Amy and I successfully appealed an early denial of insurance coverage for speech therapy for Jada. Our insurance company had initially denied coverage on the grounds that Jada had improved on her test scores over the course of three examinations. We argued that the tests don't get at where she's weak in speech (free-form conversation) and that administering the same test three times in a row played to her strength (memorization).

We also noted that this isn't just a matter of Jada not being on the fast track to Harvard. Her quality of life is impaired to the extent that she withdraws from social settings with other kids who can converse more freely. Her safety is imperiled to the extent that she is unable to describe how she got that bump on her head. And her development is stunted to the extent that we cannot reason with her in our discipline and instruction of her.

So Jada gets at least 12 weeks of sessions, and hopefully that'll give us some ammo for knowing how to break her out of her communications deficiencies and into more age-appropriate speech patterns. Special thanks to Amy for slogging through the appeals process, and fighting for her daughter.