The Year ABA Providers Started Walking Off Medicaid Panels

Autism Learning Partners Said It, Then Did It

On February 10, 2026, Autism Learning Partners submitted written testimony to New York’s Joint Legislative Budget Hearing. Executive Director Rachael Schneider set out the arithmetic and the consequence. “The first cut is already threatening to impact the services ALP provides,” she wrote. “The second cut will make our ability to deliver services in New York unsustainable.”

New York implemented the second 12.5 percent reduction on April 1, bringing the technician rate for CPT 97153 to $14.45 per 15-minute unit. Sixteen days later, the company closed its New York Medicaid and Child Health Plus panels to new patients. It was serving 523 children in the state, 480 of them on Medicaid or Child Health Plus, and said the cumulative impact had made continued Medicaid participation financially unviable. Gina Chang, the company’s president and chief executive and a doctoral-level board-certified behavior analyst, tied the timing to access. “These reductions come at the exact moment when New York families are finally gaining access to autism services through Medicaid,” she said.

The company had already left one state. In December 2025, it announced it would exit Texas entirely, with services ending March 21, 2026, citing low rates and authorization friction. After the April reduction, it said New York’s per-unit reimbursement had fallen below Texas.

That sequence is what makes Autism Learning Partners the clearest case in the country. The threat was filed in a public record, the state proceeded anyway, and the company executed nine weeks later.

One Provider Left Colorado and Stayed in New Mexico

The cleanest evidence that rates drive the decision comes from a company that made opposite choices in two states at the same time.

JumpStart Autism Center closed its Englewood, Colorado day program in May 2023, ending services for more than 40 children, roughly 70 percent of them on Medicaid. Founder and chief executive Brian Lopez said the operation lost $700,000 in 2021 and $250,000 in 2022, and that he was losing about five dollars an hour on every Colorado Medicaid client. “As a small-business owner, with my lease up in June 2023, I could not foresee taking out another five-to-seven-year lease and putting $2 million to $3 million in when I knew the numbers weren’t going to work,” he told the Colorado Sun.

He kept the New Mexico operation open, where about 75 percent of clients are on Medicaid. With a higher Medicaid share, he stayed. The difference was what each program paid for: New Mexico reimbursed parent training and eight hours of assessment, and Colorado reimbursed neither.

JumpStart closed in Colorado, where about 70 percent of its clients were on Medicaid, and stayed open in New Mexico, where about 75 percent were. New Mexico paid for parent training and assessment hours. Colorado paid for neither.

Hopebridge Has a Formula for This

Hopebridge, the Indianapolis-based platform, has withdrawn from two states and used almost identical language both times.

It closed six of its eight Colorado locations and ended ABA services in the state in August 2023. Then-chief executive David McIntosh was direct about the cause. “Colorado Medicaid has left us no other choice than to withdraw from ABA services,” he said, citing low rates and inflation.

It exited Arkansas entirely effective October 3, 2025, closing Bentonville, Hot Springs and Little Rock. The stated driver there was not reimbursement but a child care facility licensing reclassification. The construction was the same: “the state of Arkansas has left us, and many other service providers, no other choice than to withdraw our therapy services from the state.”

For an operator reading the state policy, the useful signal is that Hopebridge treats withdrawal as a standing option rather than a last resort and says so publicly each time.

AT A GLANCE

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