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Assembly bill would bar visit caps for speech therapy, expand coverage to age 26
Summary
A bill requiring insurers to cover speech‑language pathology for stuttering without numerical visit caps and extending the age limit to 26 advanced out of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee after sponsors offered an amendment to address an agency fiscal note.
Assemblymember Steve Yeager (D‑Assembly District 9) told the Assembly Ways and Means Committee on May 28 that Assembly Bill 169 would require public and private health plans, including Medicaid, to cover speech‑language pathology for people who stutter without a numeric cap on visits and would raise the covered age from under 18 to under 26.
Yeager said the change to age 26 was intended to align the bill with Affordable Care Act provisions about remaining on a parent’s insurance. He told the committee that an early fiscal note from the Public Employees’ Benefits Program (PEBB) was “multimillion dollar,” but that he had worked with PEBB to reduce that estimate and had proposed a conceptual amendment removing PEBB from the bill to eliminate the large fiscal impact.
Proponents told the committee the bill addresses unmet clinical need. Kent Irvin of the Nevada Family Alliance said he received speech therapy as a child and called the original PEBB fiscal estimate “an example of a weaponized fiscal note,” saying the agency used a worst‑case assumption that every eligible patient would receive therapy every working day of the year. Patricia Charlton, chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education, and representatives from University of Nevada, Reno and Nevada State University also voiced support.
Yeager and fiscal staff reported updated, reduced fiscal estimates during the hearing; Yeager stated the bill “as written” would produce a fiscal note of about $162,000 in the first year of the biennium and about $197,000 in the second year before he proposed the amendment removing PEBB.
At work session, committee staff recommended moving AB169 as amended. The committee moved to amend and do pass the bill; the motion carried by voice vote with no roll‑call tally recorded.
Why it matters: Supporters said removing arbitrary visit limits would improve access to treatment for stuttering, a condition witnesses described as having important functional and social consequences. The sponsor framed the fiscal amendment as a path to advance the policy during tight budget years while leaving the door open to reinstate PEBB in a future session if affordable.
