Backed by a basketball champion, more kids who stutter may have therapy covered

NCAA and NBA basketball star Michael Kidd-Gilchrist takes batting practice with the Houston Astros and George Springer at Minute Maid Park in April 2018 in Houston. Both Kidd-Gilchrist and Springer had stuttering problems in their youth, and Kidd-Gilchrist has been working with state lawmakers to try to get insurance companies to cover stuttering-related speech therapy. (Bob Levey/Getty Images)

This story originally appeared on Stateline.

Former NBA and University of Kentucky basketball player Michael Kidd-Gilchrist has stuttered all his life. Once he got to college, his health insurance finally paid for speech therapy, coverage he did not have as a child. It helped, but more than a decade later he still has difficulty articulating his words.

Now, thanks in large part to his efforts, many Kentucky kids — and adults — who stutter will have unlimited speech therapy sessions covered by their insurance.

“States should uphold the responsibility to help kids and adults to find their voice, because a lot of times, people who stutter are thought of as ignorant, dumb, stupid and who can’t read,” Kidd-Gilchrist told Stateline. “That’s not the case.”

Kentucky this year enacted a law requiring such insurance coverage for many workers and their dependents, including state employees, people who have insurance through state colleges and universities, residents who have low-cost insurance and those who qualify for the state’s Medicaid program or the low-income children’s health insurance program known as CHIP. The law will take effect in January.

Among the nearly 3 million Americans who stutter, the nation’s most famous is President Joe Biden, who worked for years to lessen his speech impediment. He remembers being bullied and made fun of as a kid, and his stutter occasionally returns in his speech. Several states are trying to get insurance companies to cover treatment for stuttering, especially for kids, so they don’t have to go through what the president did.

In Delaware, the legislature approved a bill in June covering speech therapy services for a child diagnosed with speech disorders. A bill is moving through the Pennsylvania legislature — backed by Kidd-Gilchrist — that would mandate speech therapy coverage specifically just for stuttering. And West Virginia Republicans introduced a bill this session that would require speech therapy coverage for stuttering, although the legislation didn’t advance.

But some insurance companies are skeptical of the bills, saying new state requirements drive up insurance costs and therefore may make it harder for some consumers to afford policies.

Stuttering most often affects children between the ages of 2 and 6, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. About three-quarters of the kids who stutter then outgrow it, but it can be a lifelong disorder for the quarter who don’t, according to the institute.

In addition to helping children lessen or overcome stuttering, speech therapy pays off down the road when older kids or adults need fewer mental health treatments or other expensive medical attention, according to Doanne Ward-Williams, senior director of state affairs at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, a membership organization for speech, hearing and articulation professionals.

For example, a 2023 study by the group found that a significant portion of adults who stutter may experience thoughts related to suicide.

“Do you want a child to be able to share their wants and needs? When they are school age, it becomes more of an academic issue — is this child able to be successful academically?” Ward-Williams said in a phone interview.

Health insurance companies are leery of the laws to require coverage. State mandates increase the cost of health insurance, James Swann, spokesperson for AHIP, an advocacy group representing American health insurance providers, wrote in an email to Stateline. He wrote that’s particularly true for “families who buy coverage without subsidies, small business owners who cannot or do not wish to self-insure and taxpayers who foot the bill for the state’s share of those mandates.”

Kentucky state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, the Republican lawmaker who sponsored the measure, rejected the health insurance industry’s concerns.

“None of them fussed publicly,” he said, but added that companies worked behind the scenes against the bill. “They are going to whine and complain — companies that make billions, kajillions of dollars.”

He noted that in Kentucky, even the insurance plans that covered speech therapy for stuttering often limited it to 20 sessions.

“If you’re 5 years old and have a stutter, that’s not going to be solved with 20 visits to a speech therapist,” Westerfield said in an interview. “That’s callous; that’s cruel.”

A basketball bounce

Westerfield attributed the new Kentucky law, which passed overwhelmingly, largely to the efforts of Kidd-Gilchrist.

“If you are not from Kentucky, it’s hard to understand,” Westerfield said about the basketball star’s influence. “Once you play for the Kentucky Wildcats, you are beloved. You get doors opened that aren’t open to anyone else.”

Kidd-Gilchrist played one season for Kentucky, leading the team to an NCAA championship in 2012. He played professionally for the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets (formerly the Bobcats) from 2012–2020 and briefly for the Dallas Mavericks in 2020. He retired after developing myocarditis, a heart condition, following a COVD-19 infection. In October, he sued his insurance company, Lloyd’s of London, for denying his claim that a medical condition prevented him from playing.

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association helped Kidd-Gilchrist get in touch with Westerfield about legislation to require coverage of stuttering treatment, the lawmaker said.

“Our ability to communicate is a fundamental necessity for us all,” Westerfield said. “That’s assuming they can get over the fear and anxiety of having to have the conversation at all.”

In 2021, Kidd-Gilchrist founded a charity, Change & Impact, with the mission of getting health coverage for stuttering-related speech therapy.

Kidd-Gilchrist said his parents made sure he had most of the things he needed, “but the one thing I was missing was speech therapy,” he said in a phone interview. Being a basketball star made his path through adolescence easier, he said, but that isn’t the case for most young people.

“I have a platform and a voice,” he said. “I want to use this voice to [help] people around the country.”

Kidd-Gilchrist, who was born in Philadelphia, also is pushing a bill in Pennsylvania, said its sponsor, Democratic state Rep. Brandon Markosek. The bill has passed the state House and is awaiting action in the Senate.

The bill, which would require health insurance policies in the state to cover speech therapy treatment for kids between 2 and 6 who stutter, passed the House 181-21 in June.

“I’m a person who has talked with a stutter my entire life,” Markosek, 31, said in a phone interview. “I’m one of the few state-level politicians in the country who stutters. I didn’t speak until I was 3.”

He went to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for speech therapy as a kid, he said, and was thankful for the coverage.

“My stutter was horrific; it was awful,” Markosek said. “In my life now, it does still occur. I was ordering a sandwich over the weekend, and I couldn’t say my first name.”

Speech therapy or groceries

Other states have had mixed results with bills that would cover stuttering treatment.

In West Virginia, a Republican-sponsored bill that would have required insurers to cover stuttering treatment for children up to age 18 died in committee this year.

In Delaware, a bill to mandate insurance coverage for treatment of speaking disorders for kids up to age 18 has passed the legislature and was sent to Democratic Gov. John Carney; he has neither signed nor vetoed it.

Delaware state Rep. Sherry Dorsey Walker, a Democrat and primary sponsor of the bill, said it covers speech disorders including stuttering, and requires that speech services be covered by insurance.

“Insurance companies were not covering speech therapy, and this was affecting middle-class families up and down our state,” she said in an interview. “They were trying to do speech therapy or buy groceries.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

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