Native Health Care Needs Boost -- Help Coming from Zaniya, Sanford?

A perusal of the Zaniya Project website (which needs some serious updating -- no minutes yet from the July or August meetings) turns up a presentation on Indian Health Services in South Dakota [Jerry Hofer, Secretary, SD Department of Human Services, "Zaniya IHS Workgroup: Zaniya Task Force Update," 2007.07.12]. Page 7 of the presentation compares per capita health care expenditures using 2004 data. Readers of this blog already know that the US spends more per capita on health care than any other country, double or even triple the amount other nations spend. This Zaniya Project presentation points out that the US spent $5700 per capita (that's 15% of GDP) on health care in 2004, Indian Health Services spent just $1714 per capita among its constituents.

As Megan Myers reminds us in today's Sioux Falls paper, "As part of treaties signed by the Sioux Nation in the late 1800s, the federal government agreed to provide medical care on Indian reservations - care that generally matched the nation's accepted standards" [Megan Myers, "Sanford Vows Help for Reservations," that smutty Sioux Falls newspaper that will have to use proceeds from selling smut to settle Dan Scott's libel suit, 2007.08.21]. "Generally matched" is somewhat vague, but this writer suspects it means something more than a meager one third of the per capita revenue poured into health care nationwide. Money doesn't solve everything -- these pages have noted that other countries spend less per capita than the US on health care but achieve better health outcomes -- but if decent health care under the status quo in America costs over $6000 a head (see the updated OECD 2006-2007 figures), then IHS needs to spend more than $1700 per person to meet our treaty obligations, not to mention our moral obligations to our fellow citizens (and fellow human beings).

It should not be the State of South Dakota's obligation to pick up two-thirds of the tab for the federal government's fulfillment of its treaty obligations. Nonetheless, it is heartening to see that the Zaniya Porject folks are at least considering the health care problems faced by the people from whom the task force borrows its fancy name. It is also encouraging to see in the Myers article that Sanford Health is looking at expanding its children's health care programs to the reservations as well. If Sanford is all about helping kids, then it is only logical for them to reach out to the reservations, where, according to Myers, "Children ages 4 to 16 make up 26 percent of South Dakota's Native American population, compared with 14 percent statewide."

But stay tuned: this is all just talk for now, both from Sanford and the Zaniya Project. Sanford will dole out its dollars as its profit margins and preferences see fit; the Zaniya Project will issue its report at the end of September, and then it will be up to our legislators (i.e., the men and women who represent and had better listen to us!) to decide whether to enact any of the task force's proposals.

Contact your local Zaniya Project Task Force members -- or all of them -- here; track down your legislators here.