Cara Santamaria

I know that there are parents who are going to these autism clinics with their children and they're seeing really good outcomes and they're really excited and happy that these are available to them.

But unfortunately, the data are showing and it's not really panning out that across the board that is the case.

And very often kids get the services that they need in a public school setting.

But they're spending – well, they're not spending.

Their governments are spending so much money in these private firms that are backed by private equity.

And the kids are falling behind in school because of that.

And unfortunately, we really – I think time is really going to tell with some of these kids because as I said, this industry has really popped up just over the last decade now.

So time is going to tell whether these kids are, you know, worse for wear, whether they're benefiting.

And also the investigation showed a lot of examples of just like outright fraud, of outright abuse, which unfortunately, when you dig deep into any large industry, especially involving vulnerable children, sadly, that's what you're going to find, right?

People are going to take advantage.

There are going to be individuals that didn't get their background checks that aren't, should never have been working in these clinics to begin with.

For example, in Minnesota, prosecutors recently charged two clinic operators with fraudulently billing the government $46.6 million for either services they never delivered or straight up giving kids fake diagnoses in order to enroll them in their clinics.

Ooh, outright fraud.

Yeah.

So we're starting to see more of a crackdown because this can be a massive source of Medicaid fraud.

But it's another one of those examples of desperate people in desperate financial and emotional situations looking for help, looking for help that feels like it's backed by science and by government oversight and unfortunately being taken advantage of.

And so be on the lookout folks.

If you do see these autism clinics popping up in your town, if you have kids that are enrolled currently or that you want to enroll, I just would highly recommend that you do some digging that you're checking in regularly and that you don't just make the assumption that because it has a, you know, a shiny logo and it says all the right words and that the government is paying those Medicaid bills, that it's actually going about it the right way.

And when we think about what is the specific ingredient here, is it the ABA, or is it the fact that these kids are getting one-on-one attention all day?

Right.