Previous Story
FAS citizens won’t be cut from health care: Villagomez
|
Posted on Apr 19 1999
The Department of Public Health will continue to provide health care to nationals of the Freely Associated States of Micronesia despite the recent opinion of the federal government that the CNMI will not violate any law should they decide to drop them from Medicaid.
However, DPH Secretary Kevin Joe Villagomez said FAS nationals would become a burden more to the community if they are left on their own. However, the CNMI would be reimbursed 50 percent of the medical expenses by the federal government if the FAS people here are under Medicaid.
According to Villagomez, the department is now in the process of computing the financial cost of providing medical assistance to the FAS nationals. This is part of the ongoing study conducted by the Compact Impact Task Force in a move to facilitate the CNMI’s monetary claims with the federal government on the cost of hosting the
FAS citizens which officials claim have strained limited infrastructure and public funds, like schools, hospital, housing and welfare system.
Villagomez said the task force is still in the process of drafting the parameters and procedures to justify such claims. Due to the unavailability of records in the early years, DPH will only begin computing the financial cost of Medicaid given to FAS nationals from 1997 to the present.
Unfortunately, the number of people covered by Medicaid does not entirely reflect the exact amount of money spent by the CNMI to FAS. He noted that many FAS nationals who have emigrated to the CNMI bear children here, making them US citizens. As a result, these children are no longer counted as FAS citizens in statistical reports.
The Northern Marianas is pressing for reimbursements on the cost of hosting FAS citizens after its neighboring islands Guam and Hawaii have already collected Compact Impact payments.
Rep. Melvin Faisao, chair of the foreign relations committee, has proposed a measure which seeks to change the open migration policy governing the Compact of Free Association which has allowed FAS citizens to freely enter into any American territories.
