In First Opinion this week, Lawrence Diller, a behavioral/developmental pediatrician from California, writes about an underexplored factor that might be contributing to the rise in autism diagnoses: Parents want insurance coverage of expensive therapy.

But perhaps what I found most interesting about the piece is the way that Diller, who has been practicing in the Bay Area for 45 years, describes parents’ changing attitudes around autism. “In the early 1980s, when faced with how to present to parents an explanation of their children’s problems, doctors wanted to avoid the absolutely devastating prognosis of autism,” he writes. “They would focus instead on these other diagnoses to offer parents some hope for a connection to their child.”

Now, instead of begging him not to diagnose their children with autism, parents seek the label out. I love personal essays in which long-practicing physicians reflect on societal changes and how they show up in the exam room.

Indeed, I think that change, especially within the author or the author’s field, is the key to a really great first-person. That arc lends itself to an enlightening op-ed.

Have you changed your mind about something in health care? Has your field undergone a change that hasn’t been widely discussed? Want to write about it? Let me know.

Recommendation of the week: In the Atlantic, Katherine J. Wu gives a chilling warning: “Florida Is Trying to Ignore Measles Until It Can’t” (gift link).