Complaint filed on SD senators for ‘unlawful activity”
Complaint filed on SD senators for ‘unlawful activity”
RAPID CITY— A complaint has been filed with the Senate Ethics Committee in Washington, DC, regarding unlawful activity by both South Dakota Senators, Mike Rounds (R-SD) and John Thune (R-SD).
Electronically filed with the Senate Ethics Co
mmittee on May 26, 2022, the Complaint was sent in by four former patients of the Sioux San Indian Health Service Health Facility (Sioux San) in Rapid City. The complaint states that both Senators pressured the Indian Health Service (IHS) to enter into an unlawful contract for the administration of the Sioux San IHS Health Facility with one of their own non-profit corporations, a data collection agency called the Great Plains Tribal Leaders Health Board (GPTLHB). The corporation changed the historic name of the Sioux San to the Oyate Health Center (OHC).
The complaint also states the IHS further used the three nearest tribes, the Oglala, Cheyenne River, and Rosebud Sioux Tribes, to pass tribal resolutions in an attempt to cover up the illegal contract. The federal multimillion dollar contract under Public Law 93-638 requires that a contract can only be issued to a tribe or tribal organization. GPTLHB is neither and was established by the IHS in the 1990s under the state of South Dakota as a non-profit corporation to gather information for IHS.
In addition, the complaint alleges that under the law, the community being served is to be consulted by the IHS prior to entering into a contract. The local Native American community in Rapid City, (28,000) was never consulted about the contract despite many attempts to engage the IHS into a community consultation.
Rather, on Jan. 7, 2022, according to the complaint, the IHS sent a letter to patients telling them to either go to private health care providers paying out-of-pocket, the Oyate Health Center (former Sioux San), or drive to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to the nearest IHS clinics or hospital. The nearest clinic on the Reservation is a 170 mile round-trip from Rapid City.
The four complainants now drive to the Pine Ridge Reservation as health care for them is also an obligation of the United States under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. In addition, the IHS, according to the law, is the “payor of last resort” of health care for American Indian patients. (42CFR§136.61-Payor of last resort.) However, many Native American patients in Rapid City are being billed and taken to court when the OHC refuses to pay their health care bills.
For further documentation of violations of additional laws, please see the brief of the case, Gilbert v. Weahkee, Case No. 20-1487, at the Supreme Court website: www.supremecourt.gov. For more information call Donna M. Gilbert at 605-407-2042.
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June 7, 2022