New Mexico State Senator Dede Feldman's Blog

Native American Health Care in Crisis

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.

Moms Are Rising & A Win-Win for Young Families

Autumn greetings! Fall is such a special time in New Mexico.  For me it’s like when you clean your windshield after a dust storm, and see clearly for the first time.  What makes the light change like that? Does anyone out there know?  I think it’s one of the great treasures of New Mexico.
            
This summer has been frantically busy for me, with the completion of the Health Coverage for New Mexicans study and task force, and continued discussion of ethics and campaign finance reform.  Frankly, my husband says that health care reform is driving him crazy, and if I mention “community rating”, “electronic medical records”, “indigent funds”, “ERISA,” or anything else connected with universal health care, he’s going to kill me.  I don’t blame him.  So, now for something a little different…. 

Moms are Rising in New Mexico

Rep. Danice Picraux (D-Albuquerque) and I were recently honored for our help in passing a bill that will guarantee the right of mothers to breast feed their babies or pump milk for them in the workplace during breaks.  This may sound like a small thing, but it’s part of building a family-friendly New Mexico. Usually, we hear about family values in the context of conservative opposition to same sex marriage, or support for home schooling or abstinence-only campaigns.   But it seems to me that “family values” have to be placed in the context of today’s economic realities.  Those realities are pretty harsh for young women and young families.  Did you now that three quarters of young mothers are in the work force, since it now takes two paychecks to make ends meet? And a full quarter of families with children under six live in poverty? Yet mothers are paid 73 cents to every man’s dollar for the same work, and single mothers are paid even less—60 cents. That’s why an exciting organization, both nationally and locally, has arisen to advocate for family-friendly workplaces and policies like family leave, flex time, and prohibition of discrimination based on family responsibilities. That organization is called Mom’s Rising and it can be reached at www.momsrising.org .

Support to Young Families during Children’s Early Years is a Win-Win, for Them -- and Us
            
Young families need support at home as well as in the workplace, and that’s why I’m so proud of our Lt. Governor, state legislators and the whole early childhood community for pushing us forward with pre-kindergarten and home visiting programs. These programs are just beginning to receive the support they’ve need for years in New Mexico.  Earlier this month I heard a presentation by Rob Grunewald, of the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis.  Not your usual Early Childhood Advocate. He brought studies for Michigan, North Carolina, Illinois and New York about programs there, which had yielded big results.  In fact, he said, investments in early childhood development yield a rate of return of about 16 percent a year—a rate far greater than traditional economic development projects.   Those returns are in the form of decreased costs for special education, lower number of juvenile arrests, fewer months on welfare, fewer teenage pregnancies and higher educational achievement. And that’s not even counting happier, more self-sufficient and fulfilled people!  For more information go to www.minneapolisfed.org  .