Rep Norton wants to play with more fire in Autism and now wants to change Medicaid Autism Therapy Law Passed 2013 by Introducing HF 2700 (why is she obsessed with Autism and Low income families)

Have you ever wondered what motivates Rep Norton who always seems to introduce legislations that throw low income autism families and minorities under the bus.

I mean ever since spring of 2010 – we have been fighting her bias and prejudice policies, and even though she keeps losing in her discrimination laws – she keeps coming back with more.

Now, she has done it again. HF 2700 just introduced this session is the work of the red Tshirt wearing upper/middle income of mostly Caucasian autism families and their hot shot K street like lobbyist. If you remember, this group without even a blink thought they could take over $25 million from the health and human services budget last session. They wanted the state to supplement their private insurance and pay for unlimited age and hours of ABA (applied behavior analysis) autism therapy.

Since that did not work because when you take millions from health and human services budget – the poor, disabled and everyone else suffers. All for what to add to already buttered folks. Well – sadly, they are back again with a new bill number HF 2700, but the same unequal language.

In addition, HF 2700 wants to alter and change the really good, fair and equal Autism law that passed last year for children with Medical Assistance (MA) which has objective and reasonable language.

Norton and Company now want to even mess with that. I kid you not.

On a side interesting note, apparently – this group which as I said has zero provider of color and refused to include minority low income voices testified for Norton to kill MN Autism Task Force, even though many of them were trying to get in into the Autism task force in 2011, including their leader and owner of Lovaas – Dr Larsson.

I guess as the saying goes – if I can’t be in it, then it must be eliminated and destroyed is true here. Even the previous Autism chair, Mr Trahan now wants to eliminate the MN Autism Task force. If you remember in my previous blogs, Mr. Trahan resigned because he kept refusing to follow open meeting laws and did not want the health dept to share Federal grant from HRSA (Health Resources & Services Administration) with Minority based agencies. Keep in mind that we in the Somali Autism Community were the only ones that advocated at the Federal level so that funding for HRSA was possible through CARA Law that President Obama signed into law on Sept 30, 2011. Yet, when the money became available, the mostly privileged Caucasian folks wanted to hog the resources. Imagine that level of disconnect and bias.

Further, back in 2009 when Sen Ann Lynch a DFLer from Rochester wanted to not even start the MN Autism Task Force – Mr Trahan was against her. He even went with us to Somali TV of Rochester and advocated in our community to vote against Sen Lynch. The irony is now since he is no longer in the committee – he wants it to end. I know if you are getting a headache from reading this, imagine how I and others in the minority autism community feel.

Anyway, with Mr. Trahan’s help – we did campaign against Sen Lynch who lost in 2010. Maybe we can have the same luck in 2014 and Rep Norton will LOSE the 2014 election. From this blog to God’s ears. Another related note, I saw Amira, a Somali woman in Health Policy Committee in MN House last week, learning about health policy. I almost partied like it was 1999. The more folks that reflect us – the better policies will come from policy makers who seem to get amnesia after they win.