In my life before children, I worked for a large health insurance company, processing claims, memorizing codes, and learning how to speak insurance-ese.  I left that job when my oldest was born, but now my husband works for a large health insurance company (in the IT department).  Our insurance coverage is steadily getting worse, and there is no hope at this point of it getting any better, thanks to Obamacare.

My oldest son is a high-functioning autistic, and one of the ways we are able to afford the therapy he needs is through our FSA (Flexible Spending Account), which allows us to take out money from my husband’s paycheck, pre-tax, to be spent on qualifying medical expenses.  Obamacare, as was recently reported again, is hurting parents like us, who know that we are going to have certain medical expenses during the year, by capping FSA amounts to a total of $2500 for each insurance year cycle.

For most people, this might not be a big deal.  If you use an FSA to cover a new pair of glasses, or perhaps orthodonture, or if you know that a big medical expense, like labor and delivery, is going to be coming up and you can save out the money pre-tax, then a cap of $2500 isn’t going to bother you.  But to give you an idea of what we spend on ABA (applied behavioral analysis, a common autism behavior therapy, which is partially covered, in the state we live in, as a mental health benefit), one hour costs $100.  He goes to ABA once a week.  Between ABA, speech therapy, and swimming lessons (which is cheaper than paying for sensory or occupational therapy), we spend more on our son’s therapy in a month than we spend on food for our family of six.  The FSA enabled us to keep up a level of care that he thrived under, and allowed us to compensate for other medical needs, expected (the birth of our youngest) and unexpected (my sudden need to have my gallbladder removed).  Now, we are faced with prioritizing which therapies are most beneficial to him, trying to decide what we can afford, and praying that we aren’t suddenly faced with an expensive medical need, like emergency surgery or a broken bone.

We are fortunate enough to live in a school district that can accommodate our son’s needs.  However, when Obamacare passed, special-needs parents who were paying attention sounded a warning.  And now, Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at Americans for Tax Reform, confirmed it again just last week – parents who use their FSAs to pay, pre-tax, their child’s tuition at a private school – which qualifies as a medical expense because the disability causes the need for the tuition – are being hurt by the artificial cap that Obamacare is placing upon FSAs.  “Currently, if parents send their kids to a special school, the tuition is considered a qualified medical expense that can run through your FSA,” Ellis said.  “A big chunk of the tuition parents paid for special-needs schools used to be on a pre-tax basis. Now, they’re paying on an after-tax basis.”

Sarah Palin, herself a mother of a special needs child, rightly decried this undue burden on other special needs parents.

And now, Obamacare has left out ABA therapy as a treatment that should be covered, leaving it to states and individual plans to decide what will and won’t be covered.  In not including ABA, states and plans could potentially drop the coverage, since they have to take direction from the federal government over what must be covered.  Add in the FSA cap, and there are going to be many parents who will have to make painful decisions over what therapies they can afford to give their child.

Autism numbers have only been increasing, and there are more options than ever available to special needs parents.  Our problem now is: how do we afford what our children need?  Obamacare has simply made our lives even more complicated and difficult.  My only hope is that this might be enough of a chink in its armor to finally take this wretched piece of legislation down.

When the left claims that Obamacare is designed to help everyone get the medical coverage they need, remember that this same law is leaving the most vulnerable of Americans behind – disabled and special needs children.