COMMENTARY:
Republican gubernatorial candidate Duke Rodriguez makes some fair points in a recent column holding Democratic state leaders accountable for our health care crisis.
“It is a full-scale, statewide health care breakdown unfolding in real time, under current leadership, after years of record budgets and unchecked spending,” Rodriguez wrote. And I can’t disagree with a word of it.
When the New Mexico Legislature adjourns on Feb. 19 without addressing the issue of punitive medical malpractice laws that are driving doctors out of our state every day, it will only serve to strengthen his point.
But curiously, Rodriguez begins his column with a defense of Susana Martinez, our last Republicans governor, who made the disastrous decision to upend the state’s mental health system and outsource it to five Arizona-based providers.
Relying on an audit that she commissioned and refused to release until ordered later to do so by the courts, Martinez summarily closed 15 mental health providers alleging that they had defrauded the state by some $36 million. While there was some over-billling, no fraud was ever proven and the overbilling was nowhere near $36 million.
The state’s mental health system was turned over to the five Arizona-based companies for a combined $17.85 million. They then set up shop without the needed licenses to dispense medication in New Mexico.
Testimony during a legislative committee revealed that the state had contacted the outside providers before the audit had even begun. The Arizona companies later claimed that they were never able to make a sufficient profit, and pulled up stakes. The exit was even more disorganized than the entrance.
Rodriguez complains that Democrats have not yet been able to repair the system that Gov. Martinez broke. If that’s his strongest argument as to why voters should once again put a Republican in charge, he’s got a problem.
It is both easy and correct to blame Democrats for our failing health care system. If things go as planned, the Legislature will pass bills this year to allow New Mexico to join interstate compacts for doctors, expand gross receipts tax reductions and provide an annual income tax credit for physicians working in the state. And, those things will help.
But they will not address malpractice laws that have resulted in New Mexico doctors paying much higher rates for medical malpractice insurance than their peers in other states. Rates here have gone up by 40 percent in the past four years. Specialists in high–risk fields like OB/GYNs are having to pay up to $10,000 a year just for their needed insurance.
The excuse will be that there just wasn’t enough time to consider such a complex bill in a 30-day session. Lawmakers will pat each other on the back for the incremental improvements, and doctors will continue leaving the state.
Just as it is easy and correct to blame Democrats, it is also easy and correct for Democrats to blame the process. Our alternating 30-day and 60-day sessions with unpaid legislators is surely one of the least efficient in the nation.
But the process won’t be the reason malpractice reform dies again this year. The attorneys who lead and serve on the House and Senate Judiciary committees have a personal interest in seeing those bills fail.
And so, Rodriguez presents voters with quite the quandary. Yes, the Democratic failures are many. But do we really want to go back to the days of Susana Martinez? And I haven’t even mentioned Hanna Skandera.
Walter Rubel can be reached at waltrubel@gmail.com.
Walt Rubel's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of KRWG Public Media or NMSU.