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This effort to reform our nation’s health care system is finding ways to make quality
health coverage affordable and accessible to all Americans. And I believe the bill we’re
considering in this chamber … as it currently stands … goes a long way toward making that
vision a reality. But even with this solid legislation, there
is still a large group of Americans who continue to be left behind. I’m talking about our
country’s First Americans – the 1.9 million American Indian and Alaska Natives who are
suffering because the federal government isn’t living up to its promises.
The law that provides the framework under which the health care programs for Native
Americans are delivered hasn’t been reauthorized for more than 10 years.
This means the Indian Health Services delivery system is chronically underfunded and …
given the rapid advance of health care technology … outdated. As a result, too many Native
Americans are struggling to receive quality, timely, health care.
This agency is supposed to be the principal health care provider and health advocate for
Indian people. Yet, every day, because we fail to act, the health care situation in
Indian Country grows more urgent. Native Americans are diagnosed with diabetes
at almost three times the rate of any other ethnic group. They often don’t have access
to preventive care. And Native American youth are attempting and committing suicide at devastating
and alarming rates. Just two months ago, in my home state of New Mexico, a 14-year-old
girl from the Mescalero Apache Reservation became the fourth young person from that tribe
to take her own life … in a little more than one month. Four young people in one month
on one reservation…tell me this doesn’t cry out for action. The Senate Indian Affairs
committee has reported the reauthorization bill; the House has put in its health care
package the same kind of reauthorization bill. Both of these bills would bring us much needed
reforms to the Indian health care system. This legislation, the Senate must act upon
it. We can no longer delay. For the past several
years Congress has failed to get this legislation across the finish line. It has passed both
bodies in the last several years, the House at one point, the Senate at one point, but
it is still not law. Now is the time to put this in the health
care bill and get the job done. I know my colleagues on both sides of the
aisle are in agreement that our nation’s health care system needs reform. We know health
care reform is needed now. We know the status quo is unacceptable. But what is missing is
the same sense of urgency for our Native American communities.
This, despite the alarming statistics from the Civil Rights Commission several years
ago that the U.S. spends more than twice the amount on a federal prisoner’s health care
than that of a Native American man, woman or child. That’s $3,800 per year, per federal
inmate, versus $1,900 per year, per Native American. That’s right: Our inmates have
better health care than the population with whom we signed treaties and made a promise
to provide health services. American Indian and Alaska Natives are three
times as likely as whites to be uninsured, and almost half of our low-income American
Indians and Alaska Natives lack health coverage. The longer we wait, the more Native Americans
suffer needlessly. The longer we wait, the more Native Americans go without treatment
for chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease. The longer we wait, the more Native
American teens who may take their own lives because they’re not getting the help they
need. America has an obligation to provide quality,
accessible health care for our country’s First Americans.
So, I say again, it's time to act on this important piece of legislation. It’s time
to reform the Indian health care system and permanently reauthorize the Indian Health
Care Improvement Act.