Indian health care reform

Rita Hibbard's picture

Reform measure benefits Indian health care

Dec. 21, 2009
in

Op-ed by Mark Trahant


Early Monday morning the Senate moved health care insurance reform one step closer to becoming law. But the steps ahead, in political terms, must be perfect.

TrahantBut I don’t want to bury the lede: The Indian Health Care Improvement Act is now in both the Senate and House version of health care reform. That means it’s off the table when the Senate and House iron out differences in Conference Committee (probably in early January). If health care reform becomes law, so does the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. That should open up new revenue stream for the Indian Health system with new money for long-term care, more cancer screening and better mental health treatment options.

Rita Hibbard's picture

Indian country and health care reform: Unrealistically high expectations for tribal consulation

Nov. 9, 2009
in

Op-Ed By Mark Trahant

More than twenty years ago the BBC captured the essence of bureaucracy in a sitcom called, “Yes, Minister.” The basic plot was that the Minister for Administrative Affairs, Jim Hacker, would come up with an idea – sometimes wonderful, sometimes odd – only to have its implementation sidetracked by civil servants.

Hacker’s nemesis, Sir Humphrey Appleby, once described his task as “the traditional allocation of executive responsibilities has always been so determined as to liberate the ministerial incumbent from the administrative minutiae by devolving the managerial functions to those whose experience and qualifications have better formed them for the performance of such humble offices, thereby releasing their political overlords for the more onerous duties and profound deliberations which are the inevitable concomitant of their exalted position.”

Of course bureaucracy in the United States is different. Our civil servants have far less power than they do in the United Kingdom.

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