It’s now easier for people with speech impairments to get Medicare to cover their speech-generating devices, since President Obama signed the Steve Gleason Act into law on July 30, 2015.

“People like myself, who are literally voiceless, were heard. Loud and clear,” said former New Orleans Saints football player Steve Gleason in a statement made earlier this month when the bill passed the House of Representatives. The act is named for Gleason, who has ALS. “This legislation may have my name on it, but please know it is the ALS community and the diligent legislators who deserve our applause.”

The legislation is intended to ensure that Medicare will cover the types of eye-tracking technology that access and operate speech generating devices, which are also referred to as communication devices. Also, the law removes these devices from the “capped rental” category, so that hospitals, hospices and nursing facilities can be reimbursed for them.

“Steve feared thousands of people would lose their ability to communicate with the world around them – to share their stories, order coffee, tell jokes, ask for help, or say ‘I love you,” said the bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington. “Before eye tracking technology became available, once people lost their ability to type, they could no longer communicate, but that all changed with this revolutionary innovation. Today, people can continue communicating by typing with their eyes.”

Update (5/12/2017):

The Steve Gleason Act of 2015 is currently set to sunset (it will expire unless legislative action is taken to extend it) on October 1, 2018. There is a new bill that is scheduled to be introduced before Congress in May: The Steve Gleason Enduring Voices Act of 2017, which would revise the original bill by removing the sunset date, thereby guaranteeing Medicare access to speech generating devices into the future.

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