Since so many of our children need speech therapy for either learning to eat or to communicate, or both, I was wondering how many of you have it covered by your insurance? Our insurance does not cover it--we need ST for feeding as Tucker is 100% tube fed--and have been in the process of appealing it forever!

I think legislation needs to be passed requiring insurance companies to cover feeding for children that have GERD.

Andrew was referred but the wait was so long...I decided to not put him on the list. I figured he'd talk when he is ready, so I never called the insurance for coverage. He is doing well with words and is string to put three words and two words together!

My medical insurance covers speech/OT provided by Early Intervention at 100% for the first six months and then there's some split fee arrangement based on income. I'm hoping six months is all it will take to get her caught up, lol.

Noah has only been see his SLP once for a feeding evaluation, but it was covered 100%. Within the next month or two, he starts back again, so I guess I'll find out what the deal is then...

That's awful that it is not covered, as it is a very important part of treating these kids with feeding and language issues. I really hope you are able to squeak it out of your insurance company.

Evan's speech therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and feeding therapy have all and are all covered by our provincial health plan, but I do a lot of work with him at home, b/c he's not getting near the amount of help that he needs.

Our insurance refused to cover it IF early intervention will cover it. We are just starting the process, but they told me that it's free for us here and then after 3 years old if something was still needed, the school district picks it up.

Have you tried early intervention? My understanding is that they do multiple therapies if needed - speech, feeding etc...

Evan's speech therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and feeding therapy have all and are all covered by our provincial health plan, but I do a lot of work with him at home, b/c he's not getting near the amount of help that he needs.

Yep! Same here. And the WAIT is tremendous. We just finished our block for the early intervention with the Hanen program for Iain and our next assessment is November with it likely starting up again in January. Not great to lose so much time with these kids. I have to say though when Iain hit severe for FTT (after being on the line for so many months) they did hustle. Most of my problem with our health care here in Canada is that it is very Reactive instead of Proactive.

We work a lot at home too otherwise you would not get anywhere with the space between therapies or the time alloted.

Connor gets a certain amount of therapies a year. I can't remember how many. We pay our $15 co pay and insurance covers the rest. I think we have about 30 left for the year and along with physical therapy his GI wants him to start feeding therapy so we will have to split the remaining therapies between the two.

Eliana see's a ST and OT through early intervention

Don't assume Early Childhood Intervention is free. Most state programs base their fees on a sliding scale based on income, and your medical insurance may pick up your portion of that fee.

Early Intervention for Florida

http://www.cms-kids.com/EarlyStepsHome.htm (http://www.cms-kids.com/EarlyStepsHome.htm)

Our early intervention is "free" --although they bill our insurance which is denied and then they don't come to us for the $. We don't get nearly enough services through EIP. Basically, I was told I had to decide what we wanted to focus on, speech/eating or physical therapy. I was dumbfounded and said, "so, basically, you want me to decide whether my child eats or crawls/walks, etc?" The answer, amazingly enough, was yes. We are in a huge battle with EIP over that one.

Our SLP and PT are both covered by our insurance - 12x a year per each type of therapy - although we have to pay a percentage of it, then Early intervention pays for our portion. He can be in the program until he is three if he needs it.

Sorry to hear about having to pick btw the PT and Speech treatment. Every state's program is different and it is a shame they do not offer a sliding fee scale so you can pay for the services needed (it seems silly they don't). Being a therapist, insurance is often the ban of my exisitance as well. The number of visits I can provide is often dicated by what insurance offers and even where I can provide services (some do not allow home visits and some do not allow center based services). Medicare coverage combines funds for PT and Speech therapy so heaven forbid you are on Medicare and have a stroke, you may also have to choose bewteen walking and speaking/eating or at the very least have fewer visits covered than are recommended by the therapists.

Both of my kids therapies (speech/OT) over the last three years has been covered by insurance. We are retired military and that seems to be a pretty good thing after reading some of these other posts. When my husband was active duty we had no co-pay for evaluations or therapy sessions. Jessie was just approved for so many visits every six months. She went two times a week for speech (30 minutes each ) and two times a week for OT (45 minutes each). When my husband retired, we were hit with a $12 co-pay for each session ($48 a week). As soon as Jessie turned three, the insurance cut us off and we got everything through the school district. That worked out great actually becuase I didn't have to take her to the therapy office and her school day wasn't disrupted. We have an awesome school district with awesome therapists, so it was a win-win for all of us.

For James I was paying $12 per visit to the office (even for both speech and OT... he had them on the same day). But now his therapists have split his days up (we now go on Mondays and Thursdays) and I now pay $24 a week. Not a bad deal for what he is getting and learning.

As for ECI in our area... absolutely horrible. Drug their feet on everything, didn't even have therapist on staff to be referred to... the biggest waste of my time. Thanks goodness we finally got a military developmental ped who pushed and got us into our therapy office.

As for ECI in our area... absolutely horrible. Drug their feet on everything, didn't even have therapist on staff to be referred to... the biggest waste of my time. Thanks goodness we finally got a military developmental ped who pushed and got us into our therapy office.

How odd that ECI in your county is so much different from mine and we're not 30 minutes apart! I'm glad you have therapists who are providing the services Jessie and James need now.

We are just right outside Bexar County (in Guadalupe County) and it is amazing the difference. I have always heard great things about your ECI... I wanted them so bad for Jessie, but no... wrong county. Oh well. It took some pushing from me and the dev ped, but we all got what we wanted... a private therapy office that took our insurance.

I don't know if it would work for you, but our neighbor has a child with Prader-Wille, and was having a terrible time with our EIP, so she said she moved to her parents' home--in the next county and is doing much better with that county's EIP. It's too bad you have to "work the system" like that, but you've got to do what you've got to do for your child. The federal government is dictating how the early intervention programs are working and cut funding to those counties/states who don't comply properly. Therefore, one would think there would be some uniform standard of care but as we can all see, that is absolutely not the case. I wish you all luck in geting what your children need.

My son did speech through early intervention and also through our local children's hospital. I fought our insurance for weeks to cover...which they finally agreed to do about a week after I wrote to "No Child Left Behind" Hmmmm....!!??