South Dakota Public Broadcasting

By: Lee Strubinger

For about a decade the rate of uninsured Native American children in South Dakota declined by almost fifty percent. In the same period, the rate of uninsured adults went up.

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That’s according to a recent study out of Georgetown University, which finds South Dakota is one of two states in the country where that happened.

According to a nationwide study of health insurance coverage rates from 2008 to 2015, the uninsured rate for American Indian and Alaska Native children and families has declined.

Joan Alker is a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy.

Alker says Medicaid coverage for Natives in South Dakota is a mixed bag.

“Kids in South Dakota saw a really big improvement. Native American’s uninsured rate went from 28 percent to 16 percent in 2015. A big improvement, though it’s still too high. Native American adult uninsured rates actually went up over that period. You were really the only state in the country that saw that,” Alker says. “That’s probably because South Dakota did not take up the Medicaid expansion.”

Alker says proposed Medicaid cuts in the Senate GOP healthcare overhaul will devastate Native families in the state.

“Because the Indian Health Service is underfunded and because it too relies on Medicaid, these Medicaid cuts would be a double whammy,” Alker says. “These Medicaid cuts would be a double whammy for this population because they need Medicaid and it will also harm in the Indian Health Service.”

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