Military families with extremely sick children are fighting for more choice other then treatment or hospice – PB/TK
Tricare rules force military families with sick children to pick between hospice or treatment – By Dianna Cahn / July 5 2017
WASHINGTON — The rule is usually discovered by parents bracing for their child to die.
Already consumed by tragedy, these military families are confronted with a brutal choice: Elect hospice to ease your child’s suffering or choose treatment to keep fighting for your child’s life.
Under the military’s Tricare health insurance program, they can’t do both.
Tricare does not cover curative treatments and hospice care at the same time. So, when forced to decide, military parents mostly forgo hospice. Because kids — even at their sickest — can rally.
“What do I choose — the spiritual (help) and counseling and the extra doctors and nurses who are qualified for dying, or the nurses qualified to give medical care?” said Adreanna Tarwater.
Five years ago, she and her husband, Bob, now retired from the Air Force, faced that decision when their son, Nathan, who was 12 and suffers from a rare chromosome disorder, was in a critical state with full-time nursing care.
“You have a child that you are told is dying,” she said. “You want to make it as easy (as possible) for that child to transition and for us as a family to transition. At the same time, for us to pull the nursing care would have affected our family too.”
Advocates of military children have been struggling behind the scenes to get the hospice rules changed. Military officials acknowledge the “gap” in coverage. With hundreds affected each year, advocates in the coalition Tricare for Kids say the fix is long overdue.
Continue to stripes.com article: https://www.stripes.com/news/us/tricare-rules-force-military-families-with-sick-children-to-pick-between-hospice-or-treatment-1.476753#.WV4uaoWcHIU
