Health Care for Micronesians and Constitutional Rights

Under the Compacts of Free Association (COFA), people from the Freely Associated States — the Republic of Palau (ROP), the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) — have been migrating to the United States in increasing numbers. In 1996, Congress passed broad welfare reform (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act) which limited certain federal benefits previously available to COFA migrants, including Medicaid benefits. Prior to July 2010, the State of Hawai‘i had continued to include COFA migrants under its state-funded Medicaid program. In the face of budget constraints, the State removed these people from its Medicaid rolls. A challenge on the legal basis of the denial of equal protection of the laws, ie, the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, was successful in reinstating health care to the COFA migrants in December 2010. From the health worker's perspective, regardless of various social justice arguments that may have been marshaled in favor of delivering health care to the people, it was an appeal to the judicial system that succeeded. From the attorney's perspective, the legal victories are potentially limited to the four walls of the courtroom without community involvement and related social justice movements. Together, the authors propose that in order to better address the issue of health care access for Micronesian peoples, we must work together, as health and legal advocates, to define a more robust vision of both systems that includes reconciliation and community engagement.