Nearly 25 years ago, with the stroke of a pen, the United States broke its commitment to provide medical care for Marshall Islands residents living in the United States.
This past weekend, congressional negotiators agreed to reinstate that promise, delivering Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program coverage to tens of thousands of Marshallese and residents of several other Pacific Island nations living in the United States.
“We are all so overjoyed with tears of joy for this fight that many have us have been part of” for decades, said Sheldon Riklon, a Marshallese physician at the University of Arkansas Medical Center’s Northwest Center. “This is an historic legislation that we finally right the wrong.”