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