Boxer Leads Bi-Partisan Group of Senators Seeking to Restore Funding for Urban Indian Health

Boxer Leads Bi-Partisan Group of Senators Seeking to Restore Funding for Urban Indian Health
Friday, March 17, 2006

Washington, D.C.- U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is leading a bipartisan group of Senators in an effort to restore funding for Urban Indian Health Programs (UIHPs), which the President zeroed out in his FY2007 Budget.

In a letter to the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Boxer and her colleagues argue that funding for the UIHPs ought to be restored to the FY2006 enacted level of $32.7 million dollars.

The Senators letter to the Appropriations Committee is as follows:

The Honorable Conrad Burns
Chairman
Subcommittee on Interior
Committee on Appropriations
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Byron L. Dorgan
Ranking Member
Subcommittee on Interior
Committee on Appropriations
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Chairman Burns and Ranking Member Dorgan:

We are writing to express our support for continued FY2007 funding of the Urban Indian Health Programs (UIHPs) and to request that funding be restored to the FY2006 enacted level of $32.7 million dollars. The President's budget eliminates funding for 34 urban Indian non-profit organizations providing health care services at 41 sites throughout the U.S. for 430,000 eligible Indian users.

In 1976, Congress passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, PL. 94-437, to address poor health conditions in Indian Country. Title V of this law specifically targeted funding for the development of programs for American Indians and Alaska Natives living in urban areas. Title V has since been amended to strengthen UIHPs to expand the quantity and quality of services provided to the urban Indian population.

In 1950's and 1960's the federal government encouraged Indians to move off their reservations and into various cities across the country. The 2000 census indicated that as many as 66 percent of all American Indians and Alaska Natives live in urban areas. Urban Indian populations are integral members of communities like Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Baltimore, Boston, Phoenix, Omaha, Fort Lauderdale, Anchorage, Oklahoma City, Wichita, Reno, Sioux Falls, Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Billings, among many others.

UIHPs provide affordable health care for an underserved population that is much more likely to die from certain diseases than the rest of the country. Indians suffer from diabetes, alcoholism, tuberculosis, influenza, and pneumonia at significantly higher rates than the general population. Urban primary care clinics and outreach programs provide culturally accessible, affordable, and accountable health services to our nation's large off-reservation Indian population. UIHPs participate in a wide range of activities, including outreach and referral services, ambulatory health care, health assessment, health promotion, disease prevention, child abuse prevention, and immunization services.

The Indian Health Service (IHS) estimates that average funding in previous budget years has been 22 percent of the projected need for this program, and that eighteen additional cities have an urban Indian population large enough to support a UIHP. UIHPs are all operating at maximum capacity, servicing over 2 million visits per year.

The Administration contends that urban Indians live near hospitals and have access to Federal, State, and local health care programs. To accommodate the expected increase in visits to federal health clinics as a result of cutting UIHPs, the Administration will slightly increase funding for the Health Centers program.

In a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing on the FY2007 IHS budget, Director Charles W. Grimm admitted that the Administration did not consult with tribes when coming to the decision to eliminate funding for UIHPs. The Administration also did not engage the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in how HRSA will facilitate the addition of the urban Indian population into the Health Centers system.

However, even with a small increase to Health Centers funding, it is unreasonable to expect that there will be no interruption of services or decrease in the level of health care provided to the urban Indian population. Open access health centers already serve 8.8 million users. Dealing with past budget cuts and an increased user population has stressed the limits of the service capabilities at these centers. Increasing the potential user population by 1.5 million will place a much larger burden on a system already operating at capacity to the detriment of both non-Indian and Indian users.

We are committed to fiscal responsibility and understand that restraints on funding are a reality of the current budgetary climate - eliminating an already under funded program that hundreds of thousands of Americans have depended on since 1976 is not a choice we can support. Without access to affordable and accountable health care centers, we fear that many urban Indian families will go without the services the federal government has been tasked with providing them. It is irresponsible to deny health care access to such a large and underserved population.

We urge you to restore funding for UIHPs to the FY2006 budget level of $32.7 million dollars, and thank you for your consideration of this request.

Sincerely,

Senator Barbara Boxer
Senator Dianne Feinstein
Senator Maria Cantwell
Senator Ron Wyden
Senator John Kerry
Senator Debbie Stabenow
Senator Gordon Smith
Senator Jeff Bingaman
Senator Patty Murray
Senator Max Baucus
Senator John Thune
Senator Ken Salazar
Senator Richard Durbin
Senator Edward Kennedy
Senator Tim Johnson
Senator Barbara Mikulski
Senator Russell Feingold
Senator Sam Brownback

http://boxer.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=252900