Letter: Exempt the Indian Health Service from sequestration

In your March 21 editorial “The Sequester Hits the Reservation,” you correctly assert that sequestration will have devastating effects on the Indian Health Service, an agency that is already tragically underfinanced. The sequester will disproportionately hurt Native children, who represent more than one-third of the total Native population in the United States.

Cuts to the Indian Health Service budget will impair critical preventive programs intended to lessen the effects of chronic stress and social marginalization, which remain serious challenges in Native American communities.