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."
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