Sick of Apathy

I'm sick of people. Sick of their complete and utter lack of willingness to put themselves out to do anything to even help themselves.

A while ago, I blogged about a PopVox posting I was putting up on FB. It's regarding a bill, HR2288 that seeks to put ABA under Tricare basic, changing the designation from a 'special education' benefit and classifying it instead as a medically necessary therapy.

When we moved to Colorado Springs in 2010, we were required to obtain a prescription from a doctor to restart our therapy after moving Tricare regions. Tricare appears to have quietly done away with this requirement and we can all guess why. If you require a doctor's prescription for something, it must be considered a medical treatment. The AAP recommends ABA as the first line therapy for children on the autism spectrum, to the tune of 25 hours per week. The AAP represents doctors. So, it doesn't seem much of a stretch to reclassify the therapy to be the same as OT and ST, as medical. Currently ABA is provided through a program called ECHO, which is only available to active duty troop dependents. Once a servicemember retires, they are no longer active duty and the ABA therapy provision goes away.
If ABA is considered medical, then it will instead be covered under regular old Tricare, which is what everyone gets when the servicemember retires, thus making it available to retiree dependents.

The bill that the PopVox posting referred to is stuck in committee in the house and who knows if it will ever make it out. It currently has 34 co-sponsors.
So, one of the main pushers of this initiative, started a White House petition to try and get the issue addressed.The petition needs 25,000 signatures to have the issue taken up, by Feb 1. It's a massive goal.

For those that don't know, I help administer the American Military Families Autism Support FB page. The issue has been posted there a lot, as has the petition. There are 1700 members of that page alone. Want to know how many signatures that petition has? 229 as of right now. Pathetic.
Current figures estimate that 1 in 88 military children are on the autism spectrum and some speculate that the number might be even higher.
Where are these people? Do they even realise that their child's ABA provision will vanish when they retire?
The annoying thing is that I am reasonably confident that when Jeff retires in 4.5 years, Tom will no longer need ABA. I hope anyway. So, if this doesn't pass, it probably won't even affect us that much.

But, I hear of people all the time talking about how their servicemember can't retire yet because of this therapy provision. They complain about it. But they don't do anything.
It seems that within the military community there are a few people that will actually push for change. The rest want everything handed to them on a plate. People in the past have fought tooth and nail to get even this current provision for our children and I for one am very grateful for their efforts. This is why I help in these issues. People get burned out very quickly in these efforts so others need to pick up their torches and continue.

And, if you think this is just a military issue think again. The military retire (or a lot of them do) when they are young forties, not 60s like the rest of the population. Yes, of course, they go on to hold other jobs after, but, these military retirees have children that are not college age or older. Some of them have very young children and children in elementary and middle school. These children are the ones that benefit most from ABA.
When in the military, the kids have their ABA provision, when not, they won't.
I don't push for ABA in Tom's school district because of our private provision. I haven't signed up Tom for the state medicaid waiver because we will probably have moved before he gets to the top of the 4-5 year waitlist. I am hoping that he won't need those services anyway, because we have had a lot of ABA through the military. Tom is doing very well, but not all children will not need their ABA provision. Not all children will be as old as Tom when their father (or mother) retires from the military.

Let me tell you what I would do if Tom still needed ABA and Jeff had retired?
I would lobby the school district to provide it. I would register him on the medicaid waiver list. I would take resources from others, both school and state funding to provide for my child. What happens then? The pool of money shrinks for everyone. And why? Because the military has some hookie definition of a medically recommended therapy as a special education one to get out of providing it.

So, this is everyone's problem. To all those complaining that special education eats up all their school funding and their typical kids don't get what they should, well, this is what you will get in droves when these families leave the military and need school funding for their children's therapy. And, before people start complaining that they shouldn't have to pay, again, take it up with your federal government because they are the ones that said the children have to get a free and appropriate education. Of course it's not all doom and gloom. Research overwhelmingly shows that early intervention can have massive benefits. Tom wouldn't be where he is without it.

So, I'm urging all military families who are worried about this to actually get off their arses and sign the damn petition. Stop expecting others to fight your battles for you and join in. You would think you were being asked for a kidney. You're not. It will take just a few minutes of your time.
As for civilian families, support your military friends and family and also sign the petition. It could have a direct effect on your own child's education, from even the most selfish standpoint. Aside from that, it's just a nice thing to do.