"Has the Indian Health Service been an effective, government-run delivery system?

Consider this from a White House memo: “While there has been improvements in health status of Indians in the past 15 years, a loss of momentum can further slow the already sluggish rate of approach to parity. Increased momentum in health delivery and sanitation as insured by this bill speed the rate of closing the existing gap in age at death.”

In other words progress is slow. But Dr. Ted Marrs wrote the memo on April 26, 1976, and the subject was about the original Indian Health Care Improvement Act. “In 1974 the average age at death of Indians and Alaskan natives was 48.3. For white U.S. citizens the average age of death was 72.3. For others, the average age was 62.7.”

Dr. Marrs wrote that the “bottom line” was an unavoidable connection between “equity and morality” when there is a more than twenty year differential in age at death between Indians and non-Indians."

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Measuring the progress in Indian health (Mark Trahant 5/3)

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