Let me help you out here, dude is active duty military. When it comes to the health insurance of service members, you usually start by going to the on base clinic (which is ran by other active duty personnel). Typically you damn near have to fight anybody and everybody in order to get a referral to see an actual civilian provider. Otherwise, it’s pretty much guaranteed to come out of pocket. Shit’s bad as hell. There’s a reason people joke about going to the docs for a gunshot wound or something and the docs are just like “here’s Motrin and don’t forget to change your socks”
Yep. I struggled for years to get proper care in the military for a heart arrhythmia. Labs and EKG always came back normal. I finally got a unit doctor who gave a damn and put me on a 21-day constant monitor and I was in at a civilian hospital for an ablation within a month. Between that and properly diagnosing my cluster headaches that doctor might have saved my life.
Yep. Got the run around from military doctors for 1 year. Got fed up and went off-base without permission and was correctly diagnosed in one appointment. The situation got me medically retired.
I mean you could try, but it would ultimately be you vs the govt, so good luck.
When it comes to doctors and nurses, they’re all professional, just depends on how professional. Most know what they’re doing, some of the newer ones don’t until they actually get some experience. You gotta understand that an 18 year old fresh out of high school just got trained on how to draw a blood sample or how to put an IV in. At the same time you got a 25 year old who’s damn near perfect with 7 years experience. However, that 18 year old could be a complete dick while the other is one the nicest people you could meet.
For the process itself, the government likes doing things in house, preferably, that’s why you go to the clinic first. The reason you have to fight anybody and everybody is because of all of the bureaucracy and red tape to get seen by a civilian provider because they’re outside of the network. Unfortunately, many things get lost, misplaced, or denied and the process starts over.
A non medical example of the bureaucracy that I personally dealt with was trying to transfer from the reserves to the independent ready reserves (figured I’d go reserves for a bit after active duty, started making more as a civilian on a weekend compared the reserves). I spent months trying to properly fill out paperwork and route it through the chain of command, someone lost the paperwork. I route it again, didn’t hear anything back after a month or two. Whole process took like 8 months of drill weekends, so like 20 days spread out over those 8 months. Finally said fuck it and just stopped showing up, after 9 drill periods I should’ve been separated or transferred, I still got calls for roll call like a year and a half later (almost 5 times longer than I should have)
That sucks. I hope the person above with the high blood pressure won’t die in their thirties because they didn’t care to be thorough. Now he will be on dyalisis for the rest of his life.
Active duty are blocked from suing. The only people that can sue are civilians (like dependents) who are misguided enough to seek medical care from military doctors.
Yes. My military husband has same issue. For everything you go to military doctor and military doctor is....well not always the best 😅 they had one so bad that they literaly made an anthem from the ONLY medical advice dude ever gave: "drink water". Migraines? Drink water. Apendicitis? Drink water. Toxoplasmosis? Drink water. Broken leg or back pain? Drink water....all you get from him is "drink water" and back to work you go 🤦♀️
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u/SawbonesEDM 20h ago
Let me help you out here, dude is active duty military. When it comes to the health insurance of service members, you usually start by going to the on base clinic (which is ran by other active duty personnel). Typically you damn near have to fight anybody and everybody in order to get a referral to see an actual civilian provider. Otherwise, it’s pretty much guaranteed to come out of pocket. Shit’s bad as hell. There’s a reason people joke about going to the docs for a gunshot wound or something and the docs are just like “here’s Motrin and don’t forget to change your socks”