The Native American Health Care Treaties was brought to my attention today. Our government has GROSSLY FAILED at funding adequately for decent Health Care for ALL Native American Tribes. Unnaturalcausesdoc wrote, "Dr. Donald Warne explains that Native Americans are the only U.S. group born with a legal right to health care. Historically, however, American Indian health care programs have been inadequately funded, especially compared with other federally subsidized health care." I have typed a transcript of this 1 minute clip of a PBS documentary that aired in the Spring of 2008.
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We are actually the only population born with the legal right to health care and that's based on treaties which are essentially contracts between tribes and the federal government. Those treaties state that we are exchanging land and natural resources for social services including health care, education and housing. Unfortunatetly, we have not had adequate resources (money) to meet health care needs, housing needs or education needs.
Specifically when you look at the Indian health services its funded at a terribly low rate per person. For example, if you look at the funding per recipient of health care from the veterans administration that's well over $5,000 per person per year, under Medicaid it's well over $3,500 per person per year. For Indian health service again the ONLY population born with the LEGAL RIGHT to healthcare it's about $1,800 or $1,900 per person per year. So we see tremendous disparities and certainly that's not going to be solved in a clinic or in a hospital that has TO BE SOLVED AT THE POLICY LEVEL.
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