$25 MILLION PLUS AWARDED TO ALASKAN INDIAN TRIBES IN LARGEST LAWSUIT AGAINST U.S. INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
Published December 18th, 2007
More than $25 million has been awarded to a consortium of 58 Alaska tribes in the largest judgment ever recovered against the U.S. Indian Health Service, according to a decision released last week by the U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals in Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation vs. the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The total award is likely to be over $48 million, with interest running from 1996 until the judgment is paid.
YKHC Chief Executive Officer Gene Peltola, speaking from Bethel, said “We are happy to have this 11 year old battle behind us so that we can move forward in partnership with the Indian Health Service to address the critical health care needs of our people. These funds are coming at a critical time, considering that federal appropriations to our contracts fail year after year to keep up with inflation.”
The award will be paid directly to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation, a consortium of 58 Alaska Native Tribes that provides health care across 75,000 square miles of roadless tundra to 30,000 residents in southwestern Alaska.
YKHC provides comprehensive in-patient and out-patient health care services through a 50-bed hospital, 4 subregional clinics and 45 small village-based clinics. Specialty care patients are medivaced to Anchorage.
The award comes at a time of severe health care shortages caused by steadily eroding federal appropriations and sky-rocketing health care, personnel and energy costs. Village fuel costs alone are between $5 and $7 per gallon. YKHC is challenged by the region’s increasing health disparities. When compared to all other U.S. races, Alaska Natives suffer from the highest cancer mortality rates in the country, dental decay rates 2.5 times the national average for small children, and suicide rates that are 4 times the national average.
Since the 1970s the Indian Health Service has awarded contracts to Indian Tribes to operate federal health care facilities in place of the agency. But beginning in the early 1990s, the agency began underpaying the Tribes’ contracts in order to fund other agency priorities.
This was a national issue, and in 2005 the Supreme Court held in a case involving the Cherokee Nation and the Shoshone Paiute Tribes that the agency’s conduct had been illegal. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Defense Industrial Association, and the Aerospace Industries Association, among others, filed a supporting brief in that case. [YKHC’s attorney Lloyd Miller handled that case.]
The government apparently made the decision to deny Tribal contractors their funding based upon legal advice that federal appropriations were insufficient to pay these contracts in full, given other agency priorities.
Funds to pay the award will be released from the Treasury during the next few months, from the same account that pays all awards against the United States.
There are two dozen cases pending against the Indian Health Service, with most pending in the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals, and a few others pending in federal courts across the country. Hundreds of other claims have been filed and are awaiting the agency’s action.
The judgment can be reviewed at the following website:
www.cbca.gsa.gov/2007ISDA/STEEL_12-06-07_188-ISDA__YUKON-KUSKOKWIM_HEALTH_CORPORATION,_INC..pdf
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