By Matthew B. Lawrence
Contributors to Bill of Health’s symposium on Recommendations for a Biden/Harris Health Policy Agenda have made a number of excellent suggestions. I have one more policy suggestion to add and endorse: Congress should adopt the Biden Administration’s recent proposal to insulate the Indian Health Service from future government shutdowns.
A service population of 2.5 million American Indians and Alaska Natives rely on the federally-funded Indian Health Service (IHS). The IHS is one of several trust obligations that the U.S. government owes Native peoples as a result “of Native Americans ceding over 400 million acres of tribal land to the United States pursuant to promises and agreements that included providing health care services,” as the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights put it.
Yet the IHS is dependent entirely on annual one-year appropriations from Congress. That means that the House and the Senate must come together, on time, every single year on an appropriations package, for the IHS to continue all its operations.