Sen. Byron Dorgan, chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, says he will hold hearings on the Contract Health Service program and he wants tribal leaders and others involved in Indian health care to speak up.
In a letter to tribal leaders, Dorgan said the program is “not working well, and many individual Indians are often faced with having to pay enormous bills that are supposed to be covered by the federal government.”
In fact, the CHS program is generally funded at about half the need and tends to run out of money about eight or nine months into the fiscal year. After the money runs out, only emergency and acute urgent care is provided, giving rise to the wry maxim: “Don’t get sick after June.”
Dorgan would like comments from tribal members and tribal leaders on how the current CHS program is working and to be informed of any problems tribal communities are facing regarding health care.
It would seem to simple to suggest that if the disparity in funding to Indian Health Service would equal that which is provided to the federal prisoners this would not be an issue. Much of the contract health care which is not a priority one rarely gets approval.
ReplyDeleteA case in point is my Aunt had gall bladder stones and was given medication. The medication was antacid and pain pill (tylenol). She knew it was her gall bladder but the xray was down that week. Even when she finally got the xray no one to read the xray.
To make a sad story short, her gall bladder either ruptured or got clogged as she developed an infection. She was still not a priority one and she finally succumbed due to sepsis a complication of the clogged biliary duct which burst(?)