Same thing with crime and basic needs. It costs less to give people housing, food, etc, than to staff the police and infrastructure for jails. Once you realize that, you realize it's not about the cost. It's about the cruelty.

TBH the bigger problem is, even if we did have full funding, we just don't have the necessary amount of trained physicians. There would still be a backlog.

I'm just here to agree. Also, people could stop self diagnosing, which is a whole other thing.

I don't know because I'm in the US, but does universal healthcare in other countries cover autism-related therapies and care such as ABA, occupational and speech at the rates recommend by docs (our docs recommended 20+ hours/week - or roughly the cost of $100k/year)? And is that factored into the equation?

I haven't seen the official modeling, just assumptions around the internet. But back of the napkin math suggests that appropriate autism care alone could be quite high: 1/36 of the 341,500,000 American residents have autism. Assuming 15% need care in the range of $100k, would be somewhere around $138b/year for just autism care. Does that seem in line with what you are thinking? Either way, are you able to point me to some of the modeling you have found? I'd love to learn more about how it tactically works.