Gee, I'll bet it sucks on the other end of the military career ladder too.

In a message dated 01/23/2001 6:54:38 AM Eastern Standard Time, [log in to unmask]
writes:

> i thought you guys might be interested in this article.

>  Military health care plan fails families with disabled children
>  By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., National Journal
>
>  Raising a disabled child is never easy. But some things can make it even
>  harder than it has to be. Being a military family is one of them.
>  Take Tyler, the 5-year-old son of Navy Petty Officer Second Class John
>  Denman and his wife, Georgina. Brain damage at birth left Tyler prone to
>  seizures and unable to speak. But "he will coo, and he will cry, and he
>  will smile," said his mother, and "he responds wonderfully to music."
>
>  Tyler breathes through a tube that must be carefully suctioned several
>  times an hour, to prevent his saliva from choking him or breeding
>  infection. Although Tricare, the health insurance program for service
>  members' families, covers much of Tyler's care, his mother noted that
>  "in April of 1998, Tricare pulled Tyler's nursing [care]. It has never
>  been reinstated." So Georgina has learned to do much of the care
>  herself, and gets help from nurses paid by California's Medi-Cal
>  program.
>
>  More than 70,000 military families have a disabled child or dependent
>  who requires special care or schooling. Their ailments range from
>  relatively minor learning disabilities to severe physical impairments
>  such as Tyler's. Yet the system created to help them has disabilities of
>  its own.
>
>  The problems lie not with the nurses, doctors, teachers, and specialists
>  providing the care, it is with the bureaucracy that surrounds them,
>  military families say. "At the ground level, [with] the actual primary
>  caregivers, we've been very blessed with their dedication," said Gregory
>  Hagen, an Army intelligence analyst stationed in Europe, who is fighting
>  to get special-education services restored for his autistic son, Erik.
>  "What's frustrating is that the bureaucracy for which they work is not
>  very adaptable, not very flexible, and not very capable of providing
>  uninterrupted services."
>
>
>  Full story: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0101/012301sydney.htm
>


Betty
aut viam inveniam aut faciam
"I will either find a way or make one."