The Ford Government’s autism funding changes are a colossal waste of taxpayer money. Three reasons why.

The focus of the last week has been exactly where it should be: on the human cost of the government’s new autism program and what it means for our kids. That said, there’s also a secondary economic and fiscal cost. I’d be a bad economist if I didn’t at least discuss these.

The new policy wastes money in three ways:

1. It completely ignores the need of children, by writing every child (of the same age) the same sized cheque. For some kids, it’s more funding than is required, for most, it’s way less. To stretch our dollars the furthest, funding should go to where it can do the most good.
2. It (wrongly) assumes Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) and other therapies “scale”. One common defence of the changes is that “everybody gets something”. Sure, kids can’t get “full” therapy, but they might be able to get 20% of the therapy they need. But this doesn’t mean they’ll get “20%” of the gains. Therapy gains come through repetition: it works by constant reinforcement. Getting 20% of a heart transplant or 20% of a course of antibiotics would be useless (or worse) and a complete waste of resources, so why assume other forms of healthcare “scale”? If the government has some evidence that ABA scales in this way, I invite them to show it to us.
3. I say this with much reluctance and hesitancy, because the last thing I want to do is stigmatize anyone, or devalue any human being. By refusing to increase therapy funding, we’re just setting ourselves up for larger bills in the future. If we can give kids the help they need early enough, we may be able to help them lead full, productive lives. Alternatively, they could spend decades in “the system”, which is paid for by the provincial government (and again, the human costs are the important thing here — I’m just playing “money” guy for a moment). If the government is truly worried about the debts we’re placing on future taxpayers, surely this must be a consideration.

In case you missed it: My first and second posts about the changes.