INDIAN HEALTH CARE IMPROVEMENT ACT INCLUDED IN SENATE HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM BILL

- 12/21/09

WASHINGTON DC -
U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan’s (D-ND) legislation to strengthen and improve health care for 1.9 million American Indians and Alaska Natives across the country is now part of the major health insurance reform bill the U.S. Senate is debating. Dorgan, Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, introduced the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (S. 1790) in October. The Indian Affairs Committee approved it on December 3.

 The bill was included in the “Manager's Package” of amendments released over the week end by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). The Senate is expected to approve the package early Tuesday. Dorgan called inclusion of his legislation in the broader health insurance reform bill a “major breakthrough.”

 Dorgan can still push S. 1790 as stand-alone legislation, but said its inclusion in the “Managers Package” opens up an additional track for moving it, a track that is likely to result in congressional approval sooner than would occur as stand-alone legislation. The broader health reform package, of which S. 1790 is now part, is likely to be approved by the Senate before Christmas.

“Including the bill in the broader health reform package indicates that Senate leaders recognize the improvements for Indian Country are both important and urgent,” Dorgan said. “American Indian and Alaska Natives are the only group of Americans which the federal government actually has a trust responsibility to provide health care for, and so it is important that any health reform package contains the Indian Health Care Improvement Act.”

 The federal government has treaty obligations to provide health care to American Indians and Alaska Natives, but Indian health care programs haven’t been updated in over 17 years and have been chronically underfunded for decades.  Dorgan’s legislation, now part of the broader health insurance reform legislation, would correct that.

The bill would:

• Permanently re-authorize all current Indian health care programs;
 
• Authorize programs to increase the recruitment and retention of health care professionals, such as updates to the scholarship program, demonstration programs which promote new, innovative models of      health care, to improve access to health care for Indians and Alaska Natives;

• Authorize long-term care, including home health care, assisted living, and community based care. Current law provides for none of these forms of long-term care;

• Establish mental and behavioral health programs beyond alcohol and substance abuse, such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, and domestic violence prevention programs;

• Improve the youth suicide prevention programs available to Native Americans, including streamlining the process by which Indian tribes apply for youth suicide prevention grants;

• Establish demonstration projects that provide incentives to use innovative facility construction methods, such as modular component construction and mobile health stations, to save money and improve access to health care services;

• Require that the IHS budget account for medical inflation rates and population growth, in order to combat the dramatic underfunding of the Indian health system.

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