Authors: NCUIH

Publication Year: 2009

Last Updated: 2016-04-21

Journal: NCUIH

Keywords: IHCIA, ACA, Affordable Care Act, NCUIH, NIHB, SCIA, NCAI, H.R.2708, Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Affordable Care Act, Indian Health Care Improvement Act, National Congress of American Indians, National Indian Health Board

Abstract:

The National Council of Urban Indian Health thanks the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs for seeking the views and suggestions from all of Indian Country on the redrafting of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. Some have referred to the Indian health delivery system as broken, but it would be better to refer to the system as starved. Many of the vital elements of health delivery in Indian Country are unable to function properly due to either a significant lack of resources or the inability to utilize those resources in ways that modern health care requires. Health care reform can only go so far in moving Indian health care forward without the necessary increases in funding to support the programs and opportunities contained in H.R. 2708 and the Committees' concept paper. That said this concept paper presents the desperately needed modernization to the Indian health system.

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