While President Barack Obama’s most recent health reform proposal puts America one step closer to securing its citizens’ right to affordable and quality care, it still leaves out the 4.5 million living in the U.S. territories, the islands’ governors wrote this week in letters sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada).
Gov. John deJongh Jr., along with the governors of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, said the president’s proposal cuts out the "compromise provisions" that the territories agreed to earlier this year in talks with White House and congressional negotiators—namely, $10.35 billion in extra Medicaid dollars over the next nine years. Also at issue is a place in the national health insurance exchange, which will provide subsidies to low-income patients.
Instead, Obama’s proposal mimics the Senate’s original bill, which "sharply limits" the Medicaid funding and prevents citizens living in the U.S. territories from even participating in the exchange, the letter said. It also doesn’t reflect Obama’s campaign commitment to support a "phase-in of equal treatment for the territories in federal healthcare policy," the letter said.
"On behalf of our citizens, who freely risk their lives to defend our democracy but lack a vote to determine its policies, we strongly urge you to support the House provisions for the territories in any reconciliation or other legislative procedure used to implement comprehensive health care reform," the governors wrote.
"The current unfair disparities in federal health care policy can and should be addressed in any final health care bill," they added. "Such a decision is required by the principle that fair and equitable treatment should extend to all American citizens under law and should not be contingent upon where they were born or where they reside."
The letters come on the eve of the White House summit on health care reform and on the heels of similar correspondence sent to the president this week by the territories’ congressional delegates, who said the new proposal — which seeks to reconcile the two separate plans passed by the House and Congress — leaves the territories "out in the cold."
In a recent statement, Delegate Donna Christensen echoed deJongh’s disappointment, saying she was disheartened that the territories — after a year of meetings and negotiations — were back to square one in the health care debate.
