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Mark Trahant: IHS not mentioned at Blair House summit
Monday, March 1, 2010
Filed Under: Health | Opinion

"I didn’t figure the Indian health system would be a huge agenda item at the Blair House bipartisan meeting last week. On paper, at least, the Indian Health Care Improvement Act is one of ten titles in the president’s proposal. So ideally Title 10 would have rated a mention.

It would have been even better to hear a debate about the merits of reauthorizing the 1975 law at the summit with the Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress. Some of the Republicans at the Blair House have complained many times that the Indian Health Service represents the worst of government-run care. So, we ought to ask, “why not fully fund the IHS and give it the resources to be successful?”

No such question was asked. Then no tribal leaders were in the room and the only American Indian representative in Congress wasn’t there … so it was easy for the subject to never come up."

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