[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 109 (Monday, July 20, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H8392]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN HEALTH CARE MEDICAL MALPRACTICE, PAGE 2

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Madam Speaker, government-run health care leads to 
doctor shortages, rationing of services and long waiting lines. The 
United States Government has been trying to run health care for the 
American Indians for over 200 years. And it is a miserable failure. It 
has resulted in medical malpractice against Native American Indians.
  Over the last two centuries, Members of Congress have spoken out 
about the way Indians are treated by the Federal Government. Among 
those outspoken critics include David Crockett and Sam Houston. The 
prime example of mistreatment today is the government-run health care 
for Native Americans.
  In 1787, the Federal Government agreed to provide for the health, 
safety and well-being of Indian tribes on reservations in exchange for 
over 450 million acres of land. The United States Government has been 
running Indian health care ever since.
  The Indian Health Services is part of the Department of Health and 
Human Services. They took over the Indian health care in 1954 from the 
Bureau of Indian Affairs. Now, Indian Health Services oversee medical 
care for about 2 million American Indians and Alaskan Eskimos in 35 
States.
  Last week, I talked about just a few of the tense tragic stories of 
some of the victims of this U.S. Government-run health care system. 
Like Ta'Shon Rain Little Light, the little girl who went to an Indian 
Health Service clinic in Montana. The doctor said Ta'Shon was just 
depressed. But she kept complaining to her mom that her stomach hurt 
and stopped eating and drinking. After going back to the same clinic 10 
more times, her lung collapsed. She was then airlifted to a private 
children's hospital, where she was diagnosed with terminal stomach 
cancer. She died a few days later. Ta'Shon Rain Little Light was 5 
years of age.
  Rhonda Sandland lives on the Standing Rock Reservation in North 
Dakota. She had to threaten to kill herself to finally get treatment 
for severe frostbite on her fingers. The government health care 
providers wanted to cut off all of her fingers. A private doctor 
happened to stop by on the reservation and prevented the amputation. 
Instead, he prescribed the medicine that took care of the problem.
  And then there is Victor Brave Thunder who had congestive heart 
failure. The clinic at Standing Rock gave him Tylenol and cough syrup 
and sent him home. He died of a heart attack a few weeks later. Then 
there's Harriet Archambault who died when her hypertension medicine ran 
out. She tried five times to get an appointment to get her medicine 
refilled. She never got to see a doctor before she died.
  These are not isolated incidents.
  The Cheyenne River Sioux tribal officials have held hearings on their 
South Dakota reservation to document conditions at the Eagle Butte 
Indian Health Services hospital. Betty Crowe worked at the reservation 
hospital for years. Betty said all they could do most of the time was 
hand out painkillers. Others testified at that hearing that people who 
had appendix problems were given pain medicine and sent home until 
their appendix burst. Betty's own son had leukemia. He used to get his 
leukemia medicine through his wife's private insurance, but then he got 
a divorce and he lost that insurance. He couldn't pay for it by 
himself. And Betty said that the bureaucrats at the Butte Indian Health 
Services hospital wouldn't allow him to get the leukemia medicine from 
the Federal Government.
  Germaine Means says that nonmedical staff was deciding who would or 
would not get medical treatment. Now imagine that, Madam Speaker. In 
the Indian Health Services agency, a bureaucrat, not a doctor, decides 
who can get medical care and who doesn't. That is called ``rationing.''
  On the reservations it is said, don't get sick after June because the 
government runs out of money and runs out of medicine. The Indian 
Health Service Agency itself calls their organization a ``rationed 
health care system.''
  When the taxpayer money runs out, they can't pay for those services. 
So they ration. America has proven universal nationalized health care 
results in a rationed system of care by the way we treat the American 
Indians. And every nation that has tried socialized medicine has proven 
its results in rationing and in poor health care.
  There are more problems with this universal plan. To cut costs, the 
government solution is to pay all the private doctors the Medicare rate 
for their services. It's in their 1,000-page bill. They call it 
``cutting medical costs.'' The main problem with that scenario is that 
Medicare rates don't pay for a doctor's overhead. So they run the 
doctors out of business. Why would anyone want to go to medical school 
and spend all that money just to open up a practice that doesn't pay 
for itself? And to make matters worse, the American Medical Association 
has warned us that we are losing more doctors than we are getting.
  Madam Speaker, we don't have to wonder what health care, run by the 
Federal Government, looks like. We have our own long, lamentable, sad, 
sick history to prove it doesn't work. Socialized medicine has the 
competence of FEMA, the efficiency of the post office and the 
compassion of the IRS, and results in medical malpractice against the 
American Indians. Just ask them. And that's just the way it is.

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