Something tells me Karen Ogden doesn't have a future in health care reporting in any large mainstream media publication or network. In the July 23 edition of her paper, the Great Falls Tribune editor took a sobering look at painkiller addictions and the black market for the narcotics on American Indian reservations in Montana. "Free" socialized medicine and the long wait times for surgery were partly to blame, she found. :
A perfect storm of factors is feeding the pill problem: grinding poverty coupled with handsome prices for contraband pills (a methadone tablet sells for up to $20 on the Blackfeet Reservation), a long history of addiction in American Indian communities and the fact there is no charge for patient visits or prescriptions at IHS clinics.
Some allege that crushing workloads for IHS doctors and political pressure on physicians from tribal officials and relatives — a function of life in close-knit reservation communities — also are to blame.
Another culprit, they say, is a budget crisis within the IHS that is forcing patients nationwide to wait months and often years for hip replacements, knee repairs and other badly needed surgeries.
Story Continues Below Ad ↓There were 5,170 Indian patients on the waiting list last year in Montana and Wyoming combined. To tide them over, doctors prescribe painkillers that are feeding the epidemic, health officials say.
"It does create addiction, but also it creates another economy on the reservation that people are able to sell these drugs," said Jim Kennedy, service unit director at the Blackfeet Community Hospital in Browning. "The drug problem is so rampant here with the pills."
Pshaw, liberal critics might say. Sure, that would happen in the United States, but not a country like Canada where no one falls through the cracks from the government's universal coverage. To the contrary, it's just as much a problem there, one of the hidden costs of "free" drugs:
Canada's public health agency also faces criticism for overprescribing painkillers on Indian reserves.
Richard MacLachlan, chairman of a Health Canada committee investigating the problem, called prescription drug abuse the "No. 1 health issue" on the country's Indian reserves in a March interview with the Halifax Chronicle Herald in Nova Scotia.
On the province's Indian Brook Reserve, at least 300 of the 1,400 residents are addicted to prescription drugs, estimated Chief Alex McDonald.
"Everybody thinks we have it so good because we get free drugs," McDonald told the Herald. "People got to know the truth."
—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters



















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I am laughing so hard I can
July 23, 2007 - 16:37 ET by bigtimerI am laughing so hard I can hardly contain myself....
OMG...I could tell tons of stories about the IHS or lack thereof or the abuse thereof....
Please, I am not going to waste my time.
This is a bunch of absolute BS.
there is not anymore people getting addicted by pain-killers on these reservations than any or the other population....those that abuse all of the narcotics and alcohol, selling of drugs and illegal activities let alone scams that they can get away with as long as they use their status is unbelievable.
One mistake we have made all of these years is the waste of our tax payer dollars still paying separate money to a so-called sovereign special nation, we are keeping these people down by throwing money at them and the dems do this purposely for votes, plain and simple, just like they have all minority races..the dem's get away with illegal votes on reservations more than most people think...
Look at Daschle/Tim Johnson/Thune debacle and the vote back in 2000 I think it was.
I could tell numerous true stories about the abuse of money that is pilfered through the Chiefs and counsel members ...on and on...they do nothing for their community for years and years...and the members let them.
Btw...I am part Indian so do not think I am prejudice, it is just that I have been very close friends with a lot of Indians and know of what I am speaking, been to their homes communities in Idaho and Mt.
As an important aside....I think the Great Falls Tribune is run/owned by McClatchey News ...as despicable bunch of leftists who have taken over a lot of the print news in this state over the years.
Addiction on reservations
July 23, 2007 - 17:31 ET by dagdaThere was a very good reason the white man did not sell liquior to the Indians. It was because they have an extremely high alcoholism problem. Addictive personalities find their drug of choice, whether it is alcohol, legal medications or illegal medications.
Having lived in Montana and now Arizona, I am with Bigtimer on this. We should cut the tribes lose and let them fend on their own. They would be far better off.
What is going on is a dirty little secret that all the administrations have been hiding. Remember that when Babbitt, former Attorney General of Arizona and then Governor of Arizona became Sec. of the Interior, he refused to turn over BIA documents on the money lost or squandered from Indian trust lands. I am not sure those documents have ever been turned over. He stalled until he was out of office.
Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow. Dwight Eisenhower
Hi dag... Hillary and
July 23, 2007 - 17:50 ET by bigtimerHi dag...
Hillary and Gore were in on that along with illegal contributions and bribes going on, let alone votes.
The tribes here on both sides of me are making oodles of money with Casino's which is fine, it is time to let go...
Btw...huge Casino's in all of Northern Idaho too..these are tax exempt.
I also did not want to imply that there are not plenty of hard working Indians that feel the same s I do..there are, I have worked side by side with them.
Btw...Being part Indian that is why I quit drinking whiskey long ago.... still like my beer, can't handle my JD anymore...thank goodness...lol.
White man's fault NO isn't
July 23, 2007 - 18:16 ET by bigtimerWhite man's fault NO isn't rebuilt, repub's fault Katrina hit anyway in the first place.
Same ol' same ol'...
Waaaaahhh waaaah waaaah!
Race race race...slavery slavery race problem in this country....
Waaaah waaaaah waaaah....
Reparations, Katrina, Obama being an authentic black man...
The dem's are pathetic.
<edit> oooops, this was supposed to be on the debate site...lol!
Indian Reservations on the Great Plains
July 23, 2007 - 22:07 ET by Lame CherryI wanted to thank Mr. Shepherd for posting the disaster Indian reservations are due to socialism aka government handouts. If I may, I would like to share a few things about the rez system as few people who have not lived amongst it on the coasts will not believe what disaster it is.
This is all personal for me as a child my best friend was a full blood Lakota from the Cheyenne River reservation. Most people do not know the Sioux or "throat slitters" came from Canada, into Minnesota and Iowa and then spilled out onto the great plains of the Dakotas. Dakota is but one tribal grouping of the Eastern Sioux. The southeastern or Spirit Lake Sioux are Nakota and the western peoples are Lakota.
Their main adversaries were Pawnee, Ree, Mandan and Crow who they were wiping out when the white Americans arrived after the Vikings. (The Mandan and Shoshone showed traces of Viking ancestry) On their border were the Cheyenne, Gros Ventre and Black Feet to the west.
My friend was the toughest kid I ever saw. He was like Jim Thorpe and I idolized him in being a superman of sorts. He was amazing.
In those years though the Indians drank all the time. Our bridges would have Indians running into them, laying all night in cold water and still surviving. These are very tough people. I thought they would die out, but they recovered in the 80's and are gaining a great deal in casino money now.
I though was almost a drunk driving death because Indians one night in a carload decided to make a u turn in the middle of the highway in front of my car.
As I said this rez system is personal for me as my friend went back, got married and within a few years both he and his wife committed suicide.
You can't understand that system in the Sioux as there are "bucks" as they term them or wild Indians and "wait around the fort Indians" who the bucks detest. It is allot like the phrase among liberal blacks in "not being black enough".
A great many of these people have been destroyed by welfare handouts from the BIA. For the facts, they started putting in plastic pipes in federal Indian houses in the 70's because the Indians were taking the metal out and selling it for scrap. People who live out here kind of have amusment in the things we see Indians having done with free housing. One family had a horse so they cut a hole in the wall of the house to water the horse in the bathtub. The stories get bizarre like that and make for amusing conversations.
What ties into this is now Mexican illegals are moving onto the reservations and producing children so there is a huge problem awaiting in not only the illegal question, but in the "what is an Indian" question now as illegals know a good deal when they see one in free money, free housing and nation of a few people where they can all be leaders.
This leads into the devastation of crystal meth in these lands, because it is rampant to being equal to alcoholism or replacing alcohol. There are very big processing stations in the sense of they are connected to local and probably federal officers turning out this meth which Indians are consuming. For lack of a better analogy, it is just like the gun runners before 1876 which General Custer testifed to Congress about in an effort to drain the last money from Indians and putting the west in jeopardy. Custer for his testimony got murdered and the propaganda was spun to blame him or blame the Indian so the goverment connected pedallers of death were never looked at. Meth is but one of the death sentences to the plains Indians.
The Blackfeet have a wonderful nation in region of sweet cherry as in Bing cherry production. They are a fine people like all Indians are, but without sounding racist the plains Indians are as different from Americans as a Russian. They are a tough people, but they can be brutal in the Sioux as all get out. There was a teenage girl here 2 years ago a group of Indians beat the hell out of, stripped and left beside the road when it was 20 below. She spent the whole night there until some white people found her and got her to a hospital. It is allot like Colonel Dodge wrote in 1870, Indians are Indians. That does not make them bad. They are just different in their actions as a people.
Indians are quiet and will suffer a great deal of abuse silently, but they do not like it no more than anyone else would and when they vent it can be quite brutal. They are though very genuine in affection for those they trust and who treat them right. My best friend was stereotyped and discriminated against, but he was always good as gold to me and I would trust him with my life.......but I also knew when he was not around me he would beat the bejesus out of kids I knew.
This is the strange mix of the plains Indians. Last year an Indian ran in South Dakota as a Republican, but the Sioux would not even give him a chance and support him. These same Sioux when someone like Senator Tim Johnson runs will in the Lakota region, which always reports last report ballots back with near 100% and just enough votes to always put the democrat over the top.
People can make up their own minds about where all of this leads, but the fact is the Indian nations are a micro future nation of the disaster which awaits the United States. There is absolutely nothing out there for investment. Democratic socialism rules all. The people who do try to produce come up hard against a brick wall. The Crow are one of the finest of peoples in being industrious, but nothing works in their favor due to socialism.
It is not just health care it is everything out there is socialist just like Soviet system with some elites sucking the life out of the rez. It is an incredible mess and no one is helping to end the problem. I just read that a Minnesota electric company is going to legally steal 3.2 BILLION gallons of water in an acquifer for a coal plant. The Dakota are protesting, but no one seems interested in stopping or paying them fair use for he water either.
As I said it is complicated as all issues feed into the same one. The fact is though there are government people attempting to make all of America and Americans into a rez system and that is the last place on earth any human would want to be.
God bless and hope that adds to the discussion as nobody in the MSM ever touches on what is going on out there.
*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS
Indian reservations: the failure of socialism
July 23, 2007 - 22:53 ET by GalvanicGreat post, Ken.
As many conservatives have pointed out over the years, if one wants to see the effects and inefficiency of socialist, government-does-all programs, one need only look at the failed Indian reservation model.
}}}----> Die a tribe?
July 24, 2007 - 00:27 ET by Cool ArrowI can see Christianne Ahmanpoooooor doing the obligatory "squalor pervades this sliver of a remnant of a once proud Nation". Now the Corporate giant Pharmaceutical companies, at the behest of the Bush White House, are invading what is left of the Nation of Human beings to enslave them beyond the Kennedy firewater and into the world of prescription drugs.
...and to think, I am
July 24, 2007 - 00:34 ET by bigtimer...and to think, I am part Cherokee and Sioux...
Firewater and prescription drugs....
To die for!
White mans fault...
Uh-Oh...I'm part English/Scottish/German and English too///
Whats a person to do and who do ya blame!
By the way Cool, your 'Die a tribe' wasn't wasted on me.... lol
If it's not Scottish, It's Crap !! ;-)
July 24, 2007 - 00:37 ET by Free StinkerDo you want to join the "Scotch" Tape protest at 3M next month?
}}}----> Protest on tape?
July 24, 2007 - 00:41 ET by Cool ArrowOnly 30 year old Scotch need apply.
Stinker... Sure if I get
July 24, 2007 - 00:42 ET by bigtimerStinker...
Sure if I get a free plane trip...
Well, if you're only 1/4
July 24, 2007 - 01:05 ET by Free StinkerWell, if you're only 1/4 Scotish, you can only have 1/4 of a ticket. :-)
Free, Well dang it all,
July 24, 2007 - 01:09 ET by bigtimerFree,
Well dang it all, I'll have to protest from a distance then...
Being Scottish and all....got to save save save...it's the thought that counts dontcha' know!
Haggis
July 24, 2007 - 01:11 ET by Free StinkerI'd like to thank you guys for Golf & William Wallace, but what's up with Haggis?
Okay Free... I'll
July 24, 2007 - 01:23 ET by bigtimerOkay Free...
I'll bite...who or what is Haggis?
I know I should google it...but I will leave it up to you/
Hope the power doesn't go out in the meantime.
LOL
The "loose"
July 24, 2007 - 01:32 ET by Free StinkerThe "loose" translation:
The leftover parts of a sheep, stuffed into a sheep's stomach along with oatmeal (and other stuff I think), and boiled.
_______
Fred Thompson and Ann Coulter walk into a bar. The bar is instantly destroyed because that much awesome cannot be contained in one build
Free... LOL... Wished I
July 24, 2007 - 02:30 ET by bigtimerFree...
LOL...
Wished I wouldn't of said....
...I'll bite....