Indian Health Care Improvement Act Amendments of 2007

Floor Speech

INDIAN HEALTH CARE IMPROVEMENT ACT AMENDMENTS OF 2007--Continued -- (Senate - January 22, 2008)

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

Mrs. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I wished to echo the comments of my colleague and my chairman on the Indian Affairs Committee. Reauthorization of this Indian Health Care Improvement Act is something that is long overdue. When we sat down as the chairman and vice chairman of this committee to assess the priorities of the committee, it was absolutely clear the one thing we could do now to help make a difference in the lives of American Indians and Alaska Natives was to improve the health care system, the delivery, and the access.

The last time this was updated, if you will, was 1992. Think about what has happened in health care and the technologies and the techniques since 1992. We owe it to our constituents across the country--not just in Alaska, where we have 225 tribes, but from California to Maine, from the Dakotas down to Florida--we owe it to all our constituents to finally see this reauthorization through. We do acknowledge there are some issues that are as yet unresolved, but it is not as if we have not had the time to resolve them. The time is now to make it happen.

I, too, would urge the Senate to work together, as the chairman and I have, in a very cooperative, very bipartisan manner to figure out how we move this legislation through the Senate to the House so it is finally enacted into law.

With that, I yield the floor.

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