andymays
08-29-2009, 11:29 AM
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574376981533298534.html?m od=rss_opinion_main
Excerpt:
Personal stories from people within the system reveal the human side of these statistics. In 2005, Ta'Shon Rain Little Light, a 5-year-old member of the Crow tribe who loved to dress in traditional clothes, stopped eating and complained that her stomach hurt. When her mother took her to the IHS clinic in south central Montana, doctors dismissed her pain as depression. They didn't perform the tests that might have revealed the terminal cancer that was discovered several months later when Ta'Shon was flown to a children's hospital in Denver. "Maybe it would have been treatable" had the cancer been discovered sooner, her great-aunt Ada White told the Associated Press.
Such horror stories are common on reservations, where the common wisdom is "don't get sick after June"—the month when the federal dollars usually run out. Late last year, the Montana Quarterly interviewed Tommy Connell, a member of the Blackfeet tribe and a worker in the IHS hospital in Browning, Mont. He didn't pull any punches in his assessment of the IHS. "They're lying to us," he said of promises over the years of more funds and better care. "You can pass just about any bill you want, but to appropriate money to that bill, that's another thing."
Dismal statistics prompted Mr. Baucus to declare a "health state of emergency" on the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana and to order an investigation of the IHS's use of funds. In July 2008, the Government Accountability Office reported that the IHS simply lost $15.8 million worth of equipment such as trucks and Jaws of Life machines between 2004 and 2007. It also found that $700,000 worth of computers were ruined by bat dung.
Excerpt:
Personal stories from people within the system reveal the human side of these statistics. In 2005, Ta'Shon Rain Little Light, a 5-year-old member of the Crow tribe who loved to dress in traditional clothes, stopped eating and complained that her stomach hurt. When her mother took her to the IHS clinic in south central Montana, doctors dismissed her pain as depression. They didn't perform the tests that might have revealed the terminal cancer that was discovered several months later when Ta'Shon was flown to a children's hospital in Denver. "Maybe it would have been treatable" had the cancer been discovered sooner, her great-aunt Ada White told the Associated Press.
Such horror stories are common on reservations, where the common wisdom is "don't get sick after June"—the month when the federal dollars usually run out. Late last year, the Montana Quarterly interviewed Tommy Connell, a member of the Blackfeet tribe and a worker in the IHS hospital in Browning, Mont. He didn't pull any punches in his assessment of the IHS. "They're lying to us," he said of promises over the years of more funds and better care. "You can pass just about any bill you want, but to appropriate money to that bill, that's another thing."
Dismal statistics prompted Mr. Baucus to declare a "health state of emergency" on the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana and to order an investigation of the IHS's use of funds. In July 2008, the Government Accountability Office reported that the IHS simply lost $15.8 million worth of equipment such as trucks and Jaws of Life machines between 2004 and 2007. It also found that $700,000 worth of computers were ruined by bat dung.