I feel like there's pressure to legislate out developmental delays to reduce the cost of early childhood interventions that are required by the government or something. Both things could likely be true but I've seen these pivots before and it's almost always done by governments to legislate away their responsibility by changing the definitions so that way they are controlling the demographic that is eligible for services and supports.

It's like the government telling people who are wheelchair users but who are ambulatory 10% of the time that they no longer qualify for services and supports for wheelchair users since they are now, under the new legislation, technically not (and usually they use some really icky term that shows their hand like this) "complete wheelchair users".

Very often the government in question will actually expand, or sometimes promise the expansion of, services and supports to the core demographic while excluding the rest to split people and to muddy the waters so they can say "We're increasing the supports and services to wheelchair users!!" in promo material. If they haven't written it into the budget or taken any steps to requisition funding for these "promised reforms", they often will do shit like renege on the promise later or they'll write it into the legislation for the next administration to foot the bill for once elected or they'll find ways to revise the promise down as much as possible through consultations and shit to manufacture a mandate.

But what could be driving this sort of potential cost-saving measure? A mass disabling event perhaps? I think you nailed it there.