Why is it so difficult to get an assessment for Asperger's?

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There are a lot of things posted here worth responding to, but I don't know how to do that multiple quote thing... grrrrrrr

There are no doubt many reasons. But it really seems like a loss not to diagnose older people and then find out how they made it, so the information can be used to help younger people. Like many of us had to just sink or swim, as they say. So we learned the dog paddle, so to speak. Well, that is how I feel. But I can tell you a lot about keeping going and have accomplished a few modest things I am proud of, in spite of having an unknown-to-me disability most of my life.

And I saw a video by a young autistic man who said that one of the biggest problems that he sees in younger AS people is that they are really getting the message of "you are disabled and can't do certain things" and then their parents step in too much. Is this really so? I don't know, except he is AS and talks to a lot of spectrum families.

But if it is true, then older people who can get recognized with a diagnosis can offer a lot of perspective of what is really possible without support, or what kind of support is really needed. I am not saying people do not need support, but maybe some people do not need the support that NTs think, or some of this support may have an inadvertent consequence of holding the AS person back.
I am not saying this is true. I am speculating here, just asking for thoughts.

It has also occurred to me that they do not want us to organize and form a political movement. I believe that people with AS have some very powerful advantages over NTs, even though we struggle with simple things. I do not believe the world would have the technological capacities we have without the autistic mind. I also think we have, on average, a more intuitive sense of nature and ethics. We could be perceived as some kind of threat, especially if we ever learned to think a bit more like them as a group. But I suffer hyper-vigilance, so that may explain these ruminations.

I think it can be hard to get an assessment because it's assumed anyone who fit in for a number of years without a label doesn't really have ASD.

And I don't think it's the parents fault doing too much as some say that causes the difficulty for people with AS, I think we've come to a point of demanding too much conformity or you're seen as broken that is the problem. It's labeling anyone with ASD as broken because it's a disability that's permanent and hopeless but we need more research to cure it.....when often, if we work with who someone really is, believe them, support them, help them achieve, expect they can push some and do more, whatever more is for them, and let that be good, not demand total normality and push for more and more and more acting neurotypical the closer the person gets, we would be making people's lives much better. With or without autism.

It is?

I just made an appointment and went on in (well, I think my mother made the appointment, but you know).

I had similar experiences - talked to my GP, sent me to a psychiatrist...they tried to diagnose me as depressed and bipolar. So I had to really work hard to find someone to really talk with. Once I found someone that had a lot of experience with people on the spectrum, it took quite a bit of time to get an appointment.

It takes perseverance.