Publisher's Synopsis
Travis shares why he wanted to jump from the parking garage and end his life. Medicaid has ignored Travis' basic human needs for social skills and will not listen to Travis' pleas for help. This is very upsetting and causes Travis a great deal of emotional pain. He decided that he would play a game of chicken with Medicaid by threatening to jump off the garage if they did not listen to him. Travis has been fighting with Medicaid since he graduated college and ran out of financial aid money to pay for social skills coaching. Travis has been asking Medicaid nicely for about 8 years to help him with social skills coaching and he still does not even get a response from them. Travis feels like Medicaid is ignoring his needs and not helping him with his autism. Travis becomes very frustrated that there is no help being provided to him. All Travis wants to do is learn how to talk to women and get a date but Medicaid keeps trying to claim that it is not medically necessary to date or have good social skills. Travis talks about his plans to play a game of chicken with Medicaid again. Travis is tired of being bullied by Medicaid and not getting any help that he needs with his autism. This frustration causes Travis to become very suicidal at times and that is not good for his mental health or his friends and family's mental health. Travis says something has to change and Medicaid needs to start listening to the people that they serve. Read this book to learn more about Travis' fight with Medicaid to get social skills coaching for autism. Here is an excerpt from the book. "I had decided years ago that my life depended on me being able to get that social skills coaching that I really desired and need. I did not know what I was going to do in order to get it but I had decided that I would play a game of chicken with Medicaid. That probably was not one of my smartest decisions ever but I wanted to prove a point to them that they cannot tell a person what is and is not medically necessary for that person. Only the person experiencing the issue or having autism is able to define what is and is not medically necessary for them. All people need different things in order to survive and I just happen to need social skills coaching. I do not think social skills coaching is too much to ask for especially when I have autism a social disorder. I decided on Tuesday April 12th 2016 that I was going to play a game of chicken with Medicaid. My goal was to make them look bad and make it look like the people working for them had no idea what they were doing and did not have a clue as to how to handle autism. I got up onto the top of a parking garage at IPFW a college in Fort Wayne, Indiana and I started threatening to jump off if Medicaid did not pay for me to get help learning social skills. I really thought about jumping. I did not want to kill myself but I wanted to die if I was not going to be able to get the social skills coaching that I needed. It was very frustrating for me and I remember I sat on the ledge of the parking garage with my feet dangling over the edge. I sent a few texts to people that work for Medicaid and they did not even bother to reply or check to see if I was okay. I do not think Medicaid would have cared if I would have decided to jump off of the parking garage that night. In fact, I imagine that they might have been very happy if I would have jumped because then they would not have to deal with me begging for social skills coaching any longer."
