FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — The Navajo Nation president has vetoed a proposal to impose an additional tax on chips, cookies and sweetened beverages on the country’s largest reservation, but the legislation could be resurrected later.
President Ben Shelly supports the idea of a junk food tax as a way to combat high rates of diabetes and obesity among tribal members and encourage healthy lifestyles, his adviser Deswood Tome said Wednesday. But Shelly said the legislation isn’t clear on how the tax on snacks high in fat, sugar and salt would be enforced and regulated, according to Tome.
“There are a lot of supporters out there for the tax, and again, the president wants a plan that works,” Tome said. “He’s asking the (Tribal) Council to take back this initiative and redo it so that the burden is not on the government to implement a law that is going to create hardship, especially in the collection of taxes.”
The Dine Community Advocacy Alliance and tribal lawmakers had been positioning the Navajo Nation to become the leader in Indian Country when it comes to using the tax system to press tribal members to make healthier choices.
School districts across the country have banned junk food from vending machines. Cities and states have used taxes and other financial incentives to encourage healthy choices, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, but not all the efforts have been met with overwhelming support.
The legislation in the Navajo Nation Council did not have a smooth ride either.
Denisa Livingston of the Dine Community Advocacy Alliance said the group worked for two years to get tribal lawmakers to pass the legislation. Dine is the Navajo word for “the people.”
Livingston said American Indians are more likely to suffer from diabetes and other chronic health problems than the average American.
She estimated that imposing an additional 2 percent tax on junk food sold on the Navajo reservation would result in at least $1 million a year in revenue that could go toward wellness centers, community parks, walking trails and picnic grounds in tribal communities. The tax would have expired at the end of 2018.
“Every one of our Navajo families has someone who is suffering from chronic disease,” she said. “This is the initiative we wanted to take because we see our families suffering.”
About 14 percent of the people in the area of the Navajo Nation have been diagnosed with diabetes, according to the federal Indian Health Service.
American Indian and Alaska Native adults are twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes as non-Hispanic whites, and Native children ages 10 to 19 are nine times as likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, the agency said.
Opponents of the tax in Navajo communities in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah argued it would burden consumers and drive revenue off the reservation.
Shelly also vetoed a companion bill to eliminate the tribe’s 5 percent sales tax on nuts, fresh fruits and vegetables. Tome said Shelly would like lawmakers to revise the legislation to address his concerns.
The Tribal Council can override Shelly’s vetoes with a two-thirds vote of its 24 members. Livingston said she would pursue that option with lawmakers.
Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/02/12/2981159/navajo-nation-president-blocks.html#storylink=cpy
Written by LCDR Amy Eden, Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Department of Health
The Affordable Health Care Act Health Care Coverage for the American Indian and Alaska Native
OKMULGEE, Okla. – Health Insurance coverage has not always been a familiar term within Indian Health Country. The unfamiliarity could be linked back to treaties made in 1787 between federally recognized Tribes and the United States Government. The treaties obligated the United States Government to provide health care services to Tribal members at no cost to the patient, in exchange for land that belonged to the Tribes. Due to this obligation, there was no apparent reason for an American Indian or Alaska Native to purchase any additional health insurance coverage.
Over the years, Indian Health has significantly grown along with the rest of the health care industry; and unfortunately the U.S government has not always been able to provide the appropriate amount of funding that is needed. In 1998, the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, P.1.94-437, authorized the Indian Health Service, Tribal Health and Urban Indian Health, (I/T/U) the ability to bill and collect third party reimbursement for the services provided to the patient. This reimbursement from insurance companies has created a dependable, sustainable revenue stream, which is directly placed back into the Muscogee (Creek) Nation health care system; which helps pay for additional equipment and services for the patient population.
Since ITU’s have had the ability to bill, they highly encourage their patient load to apply for health care Insurance coverage. Although, before now, due to either the high financial expense or a pre-existing condition, the percentage of patients that carry health insurance coverage has been minimal in comparison to the patient population.
The Affordable Health Care Act also known as Obama Care, is a law that is intended to reform the health care industry as we know it. It provides the American population affordable options when purchasing a health care coverage plan. It also provides the American Indian/Alaska Native population the option of using a health care coverage plan rather than using the Contract Health Service; which could potentially run low on funding and not be available to cover health care service charges, which would mean that the charges would then become the patients’ responsibility.
There are special provisions for the American Indian and the Alaska Native population when they enroll in health insurance coverage through the marketplace, such as;
No out of pocket costs like deductibles, copayments and coinsurance if the income is around $70,650 for a family of 4 ($88,320 in Alaska).
Can enroll in Marketplace health insurance any month, not just during the yearly open enrollment period.
Can begin and continue to receive health care services at any Indian Health Service including Tribal Health or Urban Indian Health Facilities.
Can get services from any providers listed on the Marketplace Insurance Plan
The Affordable Health Care coverage plans can be found on a web based portal called the Marketplace. There are four ways to apply for a Marketplace health care coverage;
On-line at www.healthcare.gov
Telephone at 1-800-318-2596; available 24 hours a day 7 days a week
Can download and print the application at www.healthcare.gov and mail to
Health Insurance Marketplace
Dept. of Health and Human Services
465 Industrial Blvd.
London, KY 40750-0001
Although the Affordable Health Care Act provides affordable health care coverage, there are still some that prefer not to enroll into a health care coverage. For the American Indian/Alaska Native population there is an exemption from having to obtain health care coverage, it is based upon Tribal citizenship. There are two ways that a Federally Recognized American Indian can file for exemption.
Claim the exemptions when you fill out your 2014 federal tax return, which is due by April 15, 2015 (make sure you have your CDIB or your Tribal Citizenship Card available, they need the information from one or the other)
Fill out an exemption application in the Health Insurance Marketplace (if you would like to fill this application out, you can download it from www.healthcare.gov, or you can call Amy Eden at (918)756-4333 ext. 315 and request an application be mailed to you)
The State Recognized American Indian population is required to file for this exemption only by filling out the application; they do not have the option of waiting until they file their 2014 Income Taxes.
If there is anyone that would like assistance with filling out the exemption application or just have any questions in general, you can contact any of the Patient Benefit Coordinators at any of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation health facilities. You can also contact LCDR Amy Eden at (918)756-4333 ext. 315.
PINE RIDGE, S.D. (AP) – An Oglala Sioux tribal committee has started a process that could allow a public vote on whether to legalize marijuana use on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
The tribal council’s business development committee approved the measure last week, and the full tribal council soon could approve a public vote, councilman Kevin Yellow Bird Steele told the Rapid City Journal.
Council members say they are considering marijuana’s medical uses, and some argued that it could ease the dependency of tribal members on powerful prescription painkillers.
“It’s not something the council wants to make a decision on by themselves,” Yellow Bird Steele said. “It will be up to the people across the reservation.”
Just last August, reservation members narrowly voted to end prohibition and sell alcohol on the tribal land.
The alcohol ban had been in place for most of the reservation’s 124-year history, with supporters arguing that legalization would only exacerbate the impoverished tribe’s problems with domestic abuse, suicide, infant mortality, unemployment and violent crime. But opponents noted that liquor stores in Whiteclay, Neb., a speck of a town along the reservation’s border, were selling millions of cans a beer a year.
Under the law, the tribe will own and operate stores on the reservation, and profits will be used for education and detoxification and treatment centers, for which there is currently little to no funding.
If the marijuana vote passes, the Pine Ridge reservation would join a number of states that have begun to turn the tide on pot use.
Tribal Councilman James Cross recalled the tribe’s reaction when South Dakota voters in 2010 rejected a proposal to legalize medicinal marijuana. The statewide vote failed by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. But a majority of Shannon County voters, where part of the Pine Ridge reservation is located, supported it.
Cross, who said he smoked in 1990 to help ease pain in his lower back when prescription painkillers left him unable to function, emphasized the medicinal needs over recreational use.
“It was really looking at the medical part of it first,” Cross said. “We really didn’t discuss revenue.”
Robin Tapio, a tribal councilwoman representing the Pine Ridge district, said she hasn’t decided whether she supports the proposal.
Tapio used marijuana to recover from cancer treatments in the mid-1980s, but she also regularly smoked pot until she was 45 and now worries that it may be addictive or cause health problems.
Nunam Iqua, Alaska (CNN) — Over the course of several years, Beth’s boyfriend shattered her elbow, shot at her, threatened to kill her, lit a pile of clothes on fire in her living room, and, she told me, beat her face into a swollen, purple pulp.
These are horrifying yet common occurrences here in the 200-person village of Nunam Iqua, Alaska, which means “End of the Land” in the Yupik Eskimo language.
Yet the violence is allowed to continue in part because Nunam Iqua is one of “at least 75 communities” in the state that has no local law enforcement presence, according to a 2013 report from the Indian Law and Order Commission.
“There would be someone to call for help” if there were police, said Beth, a 32-year-old who asked that I not use her real name because her abuser is still free. “Someone who could actually do something — right there, as soon as they get the call.”
Seems reasonable, huh?
Not in rural Alaska.
Here, state troopers often take hours or days to respond, usually by plane.
Alaska State Troopers will tell you they’re doing the best they can to police a state that’s four times the size of California and has very few roads.
The challenges are daunting, to be sure, and I don’t blame the hard-working law-enforcement officers. But the logistics can’t be an excuse for impunity.
I traveled out here to the village at the edge of land — the kind of place where a Bond villain would hide out, or where WikiLeaks would stash a computer server — in December because the state has the nation’s highest rate of reported rape, according to FBI crime estimates. You voted for me to cover this topic as part of CNN’s Change the List project, which focuses on social justice in bottom-of-the-list places.
There are many reasons Alaska’s rates of violence against women are thought to be so high — from the long, dark winters to the culture of silence and the history of colonization. But the most tangible reason is this: Much of Alaska is basically lawless.
The scope of the tragedy in Nunam Iqua, a Yupik Eskimo village, is unthinkable: Nearly every woman has been a victim of domestic or gender-based violence, rape or other sex crimes, according to women I met in town; a corrections officer in Bethel, Alaska, the regional hub; the director of the women’s shelter in Emmonak, Alaska; and Nunam Iqua Mayor Edward Adams Sr., whose wife was slashed across the face by a family member, he said — and who has a bullet lodged behind his right ear.
The new Healthy Hearts, Healthy Minds Project is looking for participants! If you are interested or would like to know more about the project please call (360)716-4896.
SEATTLE — Months after Washington voters narrowly rejected an initiative requiring labeling of genetically modified foods, lawmakers are reviving the GMO debate in Olympia.
One bill would require labeling genetically engineered salmon for sale, even though federal regulators have not yet approved any genetically modified animals for food. Another bill requires many foods containing GMOs to carry a label.
The debate comes as the U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering approval of an apple engineered not to brown. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is also weighing an application for a genetically modified salmon that grows twice as fast as normal.
In Olympia, a public hearing is scheduled Friday in the House Committee on Agriculture & Natural Resources on the bill. That measure also would prohibit genetically engineered finfish from being produced in state waters
Google contact lens could be option for diabetics This undated photo released by Google shows a contact lens Google is testing to explore tear glucose. After years of scalding soldering hair-thin wires to miniaturize electronics, Brian Otis, Google X project lead, has burned his fingertips so often that he can no longer feel the tiny chips he made from scratch in Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters, a small price to pay for what he says is the smallest wireless glucose sensor that has ever been made. (AP Photo/Google)
January 16, 2014 Martha Mendoza AP
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) – Brian Otis gingerly holds what looks like a typical contact lens on his index finger. Look closer. Sandwiched in this lens are two twinkling glitter-specks loaded with tens of thousands of miniaturized transistors. It’s ringed with a hair-thin antenna. Together these remarkable miniature electronics can monitor glucose levels in tears of diabetics and then wirelessly transmit them to a handheld device.
“It doesn’t look like much, but it was a crazy amount of work to get everything so very small,” he said before the project was unveiled Thursday.
During years of soldering hair-thin wires to miniaturize electronics, Otis burned his fingertips so often that he can no longer feel the tiny chips he made from scratch in Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters, a small price to pay for what he says is the smallest wireless glucose sensor ever made.
Just 35 miles away in the beach town of Santa Cruz, high school soccer coach and university senior Michael Vahradian, 21, has his own set of fingertip callouses, his from pricking himself up to 10 times a day for the past 17 years to draw blood for his glucose meter. A cellphone-sized pump on his hip that attaches to a flexible tube implanted in his stomach shoots rapid-acting insulin into his body around the clock.
“I remember at first it was really hard to make the needle sticks a habit because it hurt so much,” he said. “And there are still times I don’t want to do it _ it hurts and it’s inconvenient. When I’m hanging out with friends, heading down to the beach to body-surf or going to lunch, I have to hold everyone up to take my blood sugar.”
The idea that all of that monitoring could be going on passively, through a contact lens, is especially promising for the world’s 382 million diabetics who need insulin and keep a close watch on their blood sugar.
The prototype, which Google says will take at least five years to reach consumers, is one of several medical devices being designed by companies to make glucose monitoring for diabetic patients more convenient and less invasive than traditional finger pricks.
The contact lenses were developed during the past 18 months in the clandestine Google X lab that also came up with a driverless car, Google’s Web-surfing eyeglasses and Project Loon, a network of large balloons designed to beam the Internet to unwired places.
But research on the contact lenses began several years earlier at the University of Washington, where scientists worked under National Science Foundation funding. Until Thursday, when Google shared information about the project with The Associated Press, the work had been kept under wraps.
“You can take it to a certain level in an academic setting, but at Google we were given the latitude to invest in this project,” Otis said. “The beautiful thing is we’re leveraging all of the innovation in the semiconductor industry that was aimed at making cellphones smaller and more powerful.”
American Diabetes Association board chair Dwight Holing said he’s gratified that creative scientists are searching for solutions for people with diabetes but warned that the device must provide accurate and timely information.
“People with diabetes base very important health care decisions on the data we get from our monitors,” he said.
Other non-needle glucose monitoring systems are also in the works, including a similar contact lens by Netherlands-based NovioSense, a minuscule, flexible spring that is tucked under an eyelid. Israel-based OrSense has already tested a thumb cuff, and there have been early designs for tattoos and saliva sensors.
A wristwatch monitor was approved by the FDA in 2001, but patients said the low level electric currents pulling fluid from their skin was painful, and it was buggy.
“There are a lot of people who have big promises,” said Dr. Christopher Wilson, CEO of NovioSense. “It’s just a question of who gets to market with something that really works first.”
Palo Alto Medical Foundation endocrinologist Dr. Larry Levin said it was remarkable and important that a tech firm like Google is getting into the medical field and that he’d like to be able to offer his patients a pain-free alternative from either pricking their fingers or living with a thick needle embedded in their stomach for constant monitoring.
“Google, they’re innovative, they are up on new technologies, and also we have to be honest here, the driving force is money,” he said.
Worldwide, the glucose-monitoring devices market is expected to be more than $16 billion by the end of this year, according to analysts at Renub Research.
The Google team built the wireless chips in clean rooms and used advanced engineering to get integrated circuits and a glucose sensor into such a small space.
Researchers also had to build in a system to pull energy from incoming radio frequency waves to power the device enough to collect and transmit one glucose reading per second. The embedded electronics in the lens don’t obscure vision because they lie outside the eye’s pupil and iris.
Google is now looking for partners with experience bringing similar products to market. Google officials declined to say how many people worked on the project or how much the firm has invested in it.
Dr. David Klonoff, medical director of the diabetes research institute at Mills-Peninsula Health Services in San Mateo, worked with Google to see whether glucose is present in tears and whether the amount of glucose is proportional to the amount of glucose in blood. He’s still analyzing but optimistic about his findings and warns there are many potential pitfalls.
“Already this has some breakthrough technologies, but this is a moonshot, there are so many challenges,” he said.
One is figuring out how to correlate glucose levels in tears as compared with blood. And what happens on windy days, while chopping onions or during very sad movies? As with any medical device, it would need to be tested and proved accurate, safe, and at least as good as other types of glucose sensors available now to win FDA approval.
Karen Rose Tank, who left her career as an economist to be a health and wellness coach after her Type 1 diabetes diagnosis 18 years ago, also is encouraged that new glucose monitoring methods may be on the horizon.
“It’s really exciting that some of the big tech companies are getting into this market,” she said. “They bring so much ingenuity; they’re able to look outside the box.”
For the second year in a row, Indian Health Service (IHS) leadership is confused how federal sequestration will impact its budget, leading to questions of responsibility and competency from Native-focused health officials.
The latest confusion centers on how the Special Diabetes Program for Indians (SDPI), a program created in 1997 by Congress for the prevention and treatment of diabetes in American Indian and Alaska Natives, will be affected under the new federal budget deal. The December congressional arrangement alleviates sequestration on many so-called discretionary Indian-focused programs, but it leaves cuts in place for some mandatory programs.
SDPI last year was classified as mandatory under White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rules, so the program received a 2 percent cut, translating to $3 million. That reduction was able to be absorbed by IHS through an internal reshuffling of funds, according to agency officials last year.
This year, under the budget deal hammered out for 2014 by Democratic and Republicans congressional negotiators in December, mandatory programs would be subject to the same cut. As of December 24, 2013, IHS officials believed that SDPI would face the same cut as last year, and agency leadership was communicating that information to Indian health officials and to the press. An IHS spokeswoman told Indian Country Today Media Network by e-mail on December 24 that “SDPI has been sequestered by 2 percent again as other mandatory health programs.” A question at that time left unanswered was whether IHS would be able to absorb the $3 million shortfall, as it had in 2013.
Fast forward to mid-January, with IHS now telling Indian health officials that it doesn’t know if SDPI will be subject to sequestration in 2014. They also told Indian health officials on January 15 that the agency does not know when they would have more information on this issue.
When asked by ICTMN again on January 16 if SDPI would be subject to sequestration and if so whether IHS would be able to administratively pick up the slack as it did last year, Dianne Dawson, a spokeswoman for IHS, said that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should be contacted for details on the 2014 budget.
OMB has not responded to requests for comment, but one thing is for sure: IHS leadership is no stranger to accusations of not knowing how federal sequestration affects their budget. Yvette Roubideaux, acting director of the agency, told Indian health officials at various tribal meetings and in letters throughout 2011 and early 2012 that “the worst-case scenario would be a 2 percent decrease from current funding levels” for IHS under sequestration, rather than the 9 percent that was forecasted for most federal agencies if the sequester went into effect. But that information was a misreading of the law, according to OMB, and IHS ended up being subject to higher levels of sequestration.
Indian health officials were outraged that Roubideaux had fed them wrong information, and they said it cost them the ability to prepare tribal budgets to help make up for the greater shortfall. They were also concerned with OMB’s interpretations of the law.
Questions over this issue and others involving lacking tribal consultation, transparency and funding issues have caused Democratic senators to hold up Roubideaux’ re-nomination to her director position. She has been reduced to acting capacity, which has reduced morale in the agency, according to Indian-focused officials who have discussed the situation with IHS staff.
Given the new confusion surrounding the SDPI program and sequestration in 2014, Indian health officials are again angry with IHS leadership and are demanding clarification.
“I am not sure what IHS is doing anymore; we have hardly any transparency when it comes to IHS budget issues with this director and administration,” said Jim Roberts, a policy analyst with the Northwest Portland Indian Health Board, when asked about the SDPI situation in December. “I’ve never seen budget and administrative transparency worse in the history of the agency despite its mantra and their espousal that this is their priority.”
From Roberts’ own reading of the law, he says that if Congress does its job and stays within the allocation caps reached under the December budget deal, there should not be a two percent reduction to the general IHS appropraition.
National Indian Health Board officials say they are investigating the situation with the agency.
