South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds (R), a former insurance company executive, has launched an attack on the Indian Health Service, suggesting that the federally-run health system is poorly managed and is thus indicative of government-run healthcare generally.
Native Americans in South Dakota are taking offense at Rounds’ comments, arguing that any problems with the IHS is due not to its inherent shortcomings, but to the fact that “the agency doesn’t receive the funds it needs to begin with.”
The IHS would provide excellent care if fully funded," Sharon Vogel of the Cheyenne River Tribe in Eagle Butte, S.D. told the Rapid City Journal. "Even with woefully inadequate funding, not all individual experiences with IHS are bad. The quality of care is inconsistent, meaning that even at current funding levels, some people are perfectly happy with the care they receive."
Vogel, and many other Native Americans, believe that Rounds chose to attack the IHS instead of other government-run healthcare programs like Medicare, the VA or the Military Health System for political reasons – because “Native Americans are at the bottom of the money pile."
Indeed, it appears that the current attacks on government-run healthcare always focus on easy targets like the IHS, outlier individual cases in the Canadian or British healthcare systems or phony non-issues such as “death panels.” One never hears anti-government healthcare crusaders calling for the abolition of the VA or Medicare.
Perhaps South Dakota’s governor is rounding on the IHS because he’s hoping to secure a big paycheck from the industry to which he hopes to return in 2011. A golden parachute indeed.