warning!!!!!!!!!read the WHOLE piece
Healthy thinking on autism from court
The Gazette
November 23, 2004
Like many Supreme Court pronouncements, the decision rendered last week
on the funding of therapy for autistic children has roots in basic
principles of policy and law. Far from being a judgment on the value of
the therapy, the 7-0 decision was an affirmation that parliaments,
whether federal or provincial, decide on policies in general and
health-care services in particular.
In this respect the ruling - denying the claim by four B.C. families
that the equality guarantees of the Charter of Rights entitled their
children to expensive treatment - is sound. Rightly or wrongly, our
politicians have restricted public health-care support mostly to certain
services dispensed by physicians and in hospitals. That is how health
care in Canada has evolved. As Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said in
her ruling, "The scheme is, by its very terms, a partial health plan and
its purpose is not to meet all medical needs."
There are variations among provinces. Some require individuals to pay
premiums, others do not. Some cover optometry, physiotherapy and drugs
for seniors, others do not. These are matters on which elected
representatives vote in the legislatures.
In theory, though obviously not in practice, politicians could repeal
the Canada Health Act and all attendant provincial legislation and end
universal health care as we know it. They could choose to provide, say,
free college tuition with the money they save. As long as the available
services are dispensed in accordance with the Charter, the courts can
have nothing definitive to add to any such debate.
All of which is easy to say from a comfortable position on a judicial
bench or in an editorial boardroom. What about the parents of autistic
children who are driven to ruin by the cost of intensive therapy?
The wise and humane thing would be for governments to pay for it. The
Lovaas system, involving 20 to 40 hours a week of one-on-one behaviour
modification, has yielded dramatic results. For an autistic child, it
can make the difference between a meaningful, or wasted, life. It can
also avoid the future cost - potentially much greater - of
institutionalization. This is presumably one reason why Alberta, that
hotbed of socialized medicine, underwrites the treatment, as does
Ontario.
British Columbia pays only one-third of the bill, which can run to
$60,000 a year. (Curiously enough, it was an NDP government that
originally made the policy decision to deny full funding.) Lobby groups
are right to chastise the B.C. provincial government for not getting
with the program.
But the Supreme Court is also right in disavowing any decision-making
power in this matter. If it had declared therapy for autistic children
to be a right, it would have invited a tsunami of similar claims by any
number of disadvantaged persons for fully-funded therapy of many types.
Instead the court stressed the central role played by elected
representatives, and thereby the people who elect them, in matters of
health-care policy. This show of clear thinking from our top bench is a
very healthy sign.
C The Gazette (Montreal) 2004
Copyright C 2004 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global
Communications Corp. All rights reserved.
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