Years ago, my son was hit in the face with a fly ball during a little league game. He was sent to a plastic surgeon.
wah?
I was worried about that b/c my wasband's insurance was through a cheap ass HMO and I figured there was no way they'd pay for a PS.
Wrong. Plastic surgeons are the ones who know how to deal with the nerves in the face (and other parts of the body) in order to reconstruct them. It turns out that my son was fine. It was just a "what if" consultation to see if the hairline fracture might eventually require such a procedure. And what to do _now_ during healing process to prevent something getting worse later.
So, what is going on here is that they are getting practice on families (and giving them bennies) so they can reconstruct the faces and bodies of injured soldiers. It's true, learning how to navigate tissues and nerves in a woman's breast or someone's thighs during a liposuction is good practice for doing the same when they're trying to reconstruct the leg or chest of a solder torn apart by a landmine.
It all sucks, in the end, of course. They're using the bennie to entice committment to the military and using those oeprations for practice for "real war". Dirty business altogether.
As someone explained to me a few weeks ago, the government has always been about seeing how it can turn a 'gov't project' into a private commodity, anyway.
Kelley
At 12:59 PM 7/23/2004, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>Karen Schaler's article in the latest issue of The New Yorker gives a
>whole new meaning to the US Army's old recruiting pitch -- "Be All You Can Be":
>
>For years, the military has offered its recruits free tuition, specialized
>training, and a host of other benefits to compensate for the tremendous
>sacrifices they are called upon to make. Lately, many of them have been
>taking advantage of another perk: free cosmetic surgery.
"We're in a fucking stagmire."
--Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'