Does this make sense to anyone?
“Proloquo2Go is a text-to-speech iPhone app that’s meant to aid those with autism, cerebral palsy, ALS, Down Syndrome—pretty much anyone who has a disability that makes speaking a difficult venture. It costs $150.
But Medicare/Medicaid restrictions won’t pay for this software or the accompanying iPhone because the iPhone is not a uni-functional device. (A person with autism might play games on it, after all! Or call a doctor!)”
This is the equivalent of the defense department’s $500 hammer. Of course there is no common sense to any of this. Clearly if they cared about purely helping patients (not to mention staying solvent) Medicare/Medicaid would pay for the cheap iPhone app instead of the $8000 computer.
There are only two ways this can make any sense.
1) the vendors of the “uni-functional” machines are preferred vendors to the government program and have secured this status with lobbying or other forms of influence
2) the governemnt agencies could not move fast enough to change their “uni-functional” provision to account for changing times. Their provision for “uni-functional” was probably made at some point with the intent to protect someone. Whether it was meant to protect themselves, the patient or the taxpayer is totally irrelevant at this point, harmful to the end user of the program (the patient) and nearly impossible to change from the books do to the inertia inherent to programs like these.
…and the parade keeps marching
