Thanks to Rick Collins for sending this around — Terry Anderson WSJ Op-Ed on Indian Health Service

I’m not surprised that the WSJ carries the material that Terry Anderson writes. The NYTs does, too. I know that Terry is a really nice guy, despite my reservations about his free market/property rights approach to Indian affairs. We had him speak at Fed Bar a few years ago, and he expressed a great deal of support for tribal sovereignty. I had hoped he would engage tribal advocates on the positions they take on the federal trust relationship with the United States, and vice versa, but nothing really happened. I wanted this because I find his brand of editorial commentary (as opposed to his scholarly work) very troubling.

It’s usually a syllogism, repeating oversimplifications about Indian affairs again and again. For example, the one about Indian trust lands that gets noticed in the NYTs:

1. The United States owns all Indian lands.
2. Indians are poor.
2a. Quote/story from Indians angry at government.
3. Therefore, get rid of U.S. trust responsibility.

And the WSJ editorial (above), an obvious attack on the Obama health plan, unsurprising from a free market advocate:

1. IHS handles Indian health.
2. Indians are unhealthy.
3. Get rid of IHS.

Terry gets published in very respectful journals (Journal of Law & Econ., for example), but the work (despite the regression analyses) seems a little superficial to someone with roots in Indian Country. He wrote on tribal courts a few years back, attempting to refute the Cornell/Kalt theory that tribal courts help to develop tribal economies.

Here is the abstract to that paper, which advocates for PL280 to be expanded to all of Indian Country:

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