Courtesy photo
Tom Udall
‘We’re ready to go at it again,’ Sen. Tom Udall says
While health care is snarled in Washington, two members of the New Mexico congressional delegation say they’re committed to getting the Indian Health Care Improvement Reauthorization and Extension Act passed during the second session of the 111th Congress.
However, it’s possible that reaching an agreement on the act could be complicated after the election of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate last week.
“People don’t know what’s going to happen,” Rep. Martin Heinrich said on Wednesday as he prepared to attend the president’s State of the Union address. “There’s a lot of uncertainty until we know exactly what the process is moving forward.”
While there does not appear to be a clear path for the act, which expired eight years ago, both Heinrich and Sen. Tom Udall said they will keep trying.
“The fact that the House and Senate have passed it in previous sessions — I think — means there’s some good bi-partisan support for this,” Udall said in a telephone interview. “We should be able to get it in the next version of health care (reform) as a freestanding bill or joined with something else — depending on what other legislation comes up this year.”
Martin Heinrich
Heinrich said the act should be important to Republicans and Democrats.
“If we have health care reform it should include our first Americans,” Heinrich said. “This is important to people from places like Alaska where their delegation is Republican, and it’s important to people from places like New Mexico where we’ve got a Democratic delegation.”
Udall, a co-sponsor of the Senate amendment that placed the act into the pending health care reform package, has said it would allow the United States to “live up to its treaty obligations.”
“We can’t truly address the health care crisis in our country without improving health care for all of our citizens, and that includes the 1.9 million American Indians and Alaska Natives whose health care is coordinated through this act,” Udall said last fall.
In October, when it appeared the Democrats had the votes to pass health care, Heinrich sent a letter to House leaders and urged them to include the reauthorization act as part of comprehensive health insurance reform.
At the time, Heinrich wrote, “Our country desperately needs health insurance reform — but our pursuit of reform cannot leave Native Americans behind. I represent tens of thousands of Native Americans in central New Mexico, and my constituents have made it clear that they cannot wait any longer for health care reform in Indian country.”
Today, nothing has changed in Heinrich’s mind, and he said he’s “optimistic if there is a package that comes out of the House and Senate that (the act) will be a part of it. That’s certainly what I’ve been advocating to the leadership of the House.”
Heinrich insists he does not regret tying the measure to the comprehensive reform bill, because the House Natural Resources Committee, where he is a standing member, has already passed the act as a stand-alone piece of legislation.
Udall told NMPolitics.net the Indian health care act would be included in the Senate’s next version of health care — either as a freestanding bill or joined with “something else of a health care nature depending on what other legislation comes up this year.”
As a last resort, Udall said it could be attached to bills at the end of the year to “get things done that we all know need to be done.”
“There’s no doubt if you ask all 22 New Mexico tribes they’d say this is their top priority,” Udall said. “There are very severe health care disparities on natives lands.”