Military Family Fights for Autism Coverage

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- A retired airman who dedicated 21 years to the United States Air Force is denied medical coverage for his autisitc five-year-old daughter.
Sara Bryan was diagnosed with autism at age four. The news was devastating to her parents, Jeff Bryan and his wife, Lisa.

Military Wife Fights Her Own Special Battle

Part of an occasional series from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

PHILADELPHIA -- Any day now, Lisa Mathews' husband will be on American soil after a yearlong tour of duty in Iraq.
When his week of deployment-ending activities at Fort Dix is over, Staff Sgt. Joseph Mathews II, an Army National Guardsman in the 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, will walk through the front door of his Northeast Philadelphia rowhouse. He will be back into the daily, chaotic lives of his wife and children.
Only then, when the family is reunited, will Lisa be done with her contribution to the military - serving as the lone caretaker of their five children, three of whom have special needs.
The Mathewses are among thousands of U.S. military families whose children have medical conditions requiring special services and care. The Pentagon estimates that 115,000 to 175,000 out of about two million children of service members have special needs, a percentage that generally mirrors the nation at-large.

Help for Military Families With a Child on the Spectrum

When the Hollopeters, a Coast Guard family now living on the base in Fort Wadsworth, moved here from California last year, they thought their autistic son would be able to receive the same level of subsidized health care.
They were wrong.
Not only was Taylor, 7, deemed ineligible by the New York State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (OMRDD) because of the progress he had made, but the eight-month delay while the family appealed the ruling and then established subsequent care set him back socially, said his mother, Amy.
Now, an amendment being offered by U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) would help military families like Taylor's, who move every few years and must re-establish critical medical and social services in their new communities -- and are often faced with footing the bill to fill in the blanks.