O.K., I just can’t help but tell you the latest about Indian Health Care here in
Albuquerque and what it’s doing to our uninsured rate around the state. Sorry,
Mark, what’s going on is just too important to leave unsaid. The Albuquerque
field office of IHS (Indian Health Service) has been cut to the bone. In 2005,
the IHS urgent care facility, which treated between 100 and 200 urban Indian
patients daily, was closed down. The IHS, in general, is being systematically
defunded and dismantled by the federal government, with nothing set to take its
place. Right now, for example, the federal government spends $3,242 per year on
federal prisoners, and only $2,130 per year for IHS patients—to whom it owes a
federal trust responsibility.
But even if it were fully funded, Native American patients face a dangerous
run-around. Presenting at an IHS facility here, they are told they can only get
(pre-paid) care at their home reservation. If some do travel there, they are
asked for a utility bill or other proof of residency, which of course, they
don’t have, because they live here. This is a major problem, since there are
46,883 Native Americans in the Duke City, most of them not within range of
Pueblo or other tribal health clinics. The result is that those folks fall into
the vast, unpaid rolls of the uninsured (now 432,000 statewide). First Nations
Community Health Source, Albuquerque’s only urban Indian health clinic,
estimates that 70% of Albuquerque’s Indian population is uninsured. Some argue
that they are UNM Hospital’s responsibility, based on an old contract and
lease. Right now, many are incorporated into UNM Care or, more likely, are
still waiting at the UNM emergency room.
Advocates for Indian Health appeared before the Health and Human Services
Committee at our July meeting in Zuni and Gallup. To help, they want better
funding from the federal level as well as the passage of a New Mexico Indian
Health Care Improvement Act, which would create a $10 million fund to parallel
the state’s existing health care efforts. For more information, go to
www.nmpovertylaw.org or contact
the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center at
www.indianpueblo.org .
Meanwhile, the drive for universal coverage is still
picking up steam… more about this next time.
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