SENATE MEMORIAL 46
47th legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - second session, 2006
INTRODUCED BY
Leonard Tsosie
A MEMORIAL
REQUESTING THE NEW MEXICO CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION TO URGE CONGRESS AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION TO FULFILL THEIR OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE SAFE, EFFECTIVE AND ADEQUATE NATIVE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE TO ADDRESS THE CRISIS THAT AFFECTS ALL AMERICAN TAXPAYERS.
WHEREAS, the federal government, through treaties entered into with tribal governments or Indian community governing councils, has the primary responsibility for providing health care to the American Indian and Alaska native population of New Mexico and the United States; and
WHEREAS, American Indians and Alaska natives in New Mexico and across the nation experience the highest rates of cancer, obesity, diabetes and heart disease of any population in the United States, yet are provided the most limited access to health care in the country due to chronic underfunding of the Indian health system; and
WHEREAS, Native American women are now reported, in the American Journal of Public Health, to suffer the highest percentage of mental disorders in the world; and
WHEREAS, the accident rate is seven times higher in the Native American population than in other populations in the United States; and
WHEREAS, both the diabetes and tuberculosis rates in the Native American population in Albuquerque alone rank fifth in the country, and the alcoholism rate ranks second; and
WHEREAS, the suicide rate for Native Americans is almost double that of other Americans, at just over twenty per one hundred thousand people; and
WHEREAS, Native Americans living in New Mexico live at or below the poverty level, and over half live in single-parent families; and
WHEREAS, New Mexico is home to over one hundred ninety thousand people who identify themselves as American Indian or Alaska natives, including those from the nineteen pueblos, two Apache nations and the Navajo Nation located in New Mexico; and
WHEREAS, American Indian communities in New Mexico are served by two Indian health service areas: the Albuquerque area and the Navajo area; and
WHEREAS, the Indian nations, tribes and pueblos in New Mexico are culturally unique and sovereign governments; and
WHEREAS, disparities in the health care provided to American Indian and Alaska natives have been documented many times, including most recently in the July 2003 report of the United States commission on civil rights, entitled "A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country" and the September 2004 United States commission on civil rights, entitled "Broken Promises: Evaluating the Native American Health Care System"; and
WHEREAS, historically the Indian health service budget has been underfunded by billions of dollars every year for at least a decade, resulting in the lack of safe and adequate health care for Native Americans and Alaska natives in New Mexico and nationwide; and
WHEREAS, requests for appropriations from the United States congress have been deferred due to the funding being categorized as "discretionary" and more recently because of the high cost of supporting the war on terrorism domestically and in Iraq and Afghanistan; and
WHEREAS, prior to funding cuts in the 1990s, the Indian health service spent an estimated one thousand nine hundred twenty dollars ($1,920) per patient, or less than one-half of the expenditures made per veteran, per federal inmate or per medicare recipient for the provision of health care; and
WHEREAS, funding for urban Indian health services comprises only one percent of the Indian health service's budget, although an estimated sixty percent of all Native Americans live in urban centers away from tribal communities; and
WHEREAS, historically insufficient appropriations to the Indian health service have resulted in a community of educated and nationally accredited medical professionals bypassing performance of necessary medical examinations and tests in order to save costs, a practice rarely or never found in other medical communities in the United States; and
WHEREAS, unsafe and inadequate health care conditions resulting in unnecessary deaths and disabilities of Native American patients have resulted in costly litigation and additional expenses for rehabilitation medical care that impacts many, including federal and state taxpayers, the private health care systems and, more tragically, the affected families of patients; and
WHEREAS, insufficient funding of the Indian health service also affects other health care providers and facilities and funding sources, as deserving patients no longer are being served by the Indian health service and are forced to seek care elsewhere; and
WHEREAS, New Mexico's congressional delegation has already written to urge the federal Indian health service to provide stable and reliable funding for Indian health services, a task less possible each year as funding decreases, particularly since the result of insufficient funding may force closure of Indian health centers in New Mexico, leaving thousands of New Mexico Native American residents without access to the health care promised them in treaties and in law or access to any type of safe and adequate health care; and
WHEREAS, the country's obligation to fund services for native people deprived of their lands and traditional ways is found in treaty, statute, constitution and ethics; and
WHEREAS, because the Indian health service has failed for so long to fulfill the obligation of providing safe and adequate Native American health care, the charge it was established to perform, there may now be a need to seek alternate and creative ideas to fulfill the long-standing treaty obligations to Native Americans and Alaska natives;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that the New Mexico congressional delegation be requested to urge congress and the Bush administration to fulfill their obligation to provide safe, effective and adequate health care to Native Americans and Alaska natives through effective means in order to prevent wasteful spending of tax and other revenue for litigation, additional medical expenses and tragic results to patients and families that could have been avoided if congress and the president had met the health care funding needs of Native Americans and Alaska natives; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Indian affairs department transmit copies of this memorial to the forty-nine other states in the union and request that they also pressure their congressional delegations to end the fiscal strangulation and slow demise of the Indian health service and either fund Indian health services adequately or develop a means of meeting the federal government's treaty obligations to provide safe, effective and adequate medical care to all Native Americans and Alaska natives; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the New Mexico congressional delegation; the president of the United States; the United States secretary of health and human services; the director of the federal Indian health service; the governors of New Mexico's nineteen pueblos; the presidents of the Jicarilla Apache Nation, the Mescalero Apache Tribe and the Navajo Nation; and the New Mexico secretaries of health and Indian affairs.
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