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© 2026 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  2/3/26

Medical malpractice reform stumbles in first legislative hearing  

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     Before explaining her medical malpractice reform bill, Rep. Christine Chandler complained about the “noise” surrounding New Mexico’s doctor shortage – angry rhetoric about trial lawyers on one side and corporate healthcare on the other. The Los Alamos Democrat was hoping to cut a middle path through a thorny field with her bipartisan House Bill 99. 

     But during a long, intense hearing before the House Health and Human Services Committee, the angry rhetoric about corporate-owned hospitals won. Committee Democrats crippled HB 99 with an amendment.

     HB 99 responds to a medical malpractice climate in New Mexico that’s spiking insurance premiums for providers and driving doctors away. We have no limit on punitive damages, creating a field day for trial lawyers and threatening doctors with financial ruin. The bill would cap punitive damages at $900,000 for doctors, $1 million for outpatient healthcare facilities and $6 million for hospitals. It would also pay plaintiffs’ medical costs as they’re incurred rather than in a lump sum and increase the standard of proof needed to award damages.

     Chandler told the committee that last summer she decided to “move beyond the rhetoric” and look at what was going on with medical malpractice by studying laws in other states. Her conclusion: “We are very much out of alignment with how other states handle malpractice. As a result, it places us at a disadvantage for recruiting and retaining physicians and other healthcare providers.”

     The bill’s co-sponsor, House Minority Leader Gail Armstrong of Magdalena, said HB 99 “sends a strong signal that New Mexico values its doctors.”

     Chandler, a lawyer, focused primarily on punitive damages. Not only do we allow far higher punitive damages than other states, we allow them in the initial lawsuit and not later in the proceeding as other states do, so they become a weapon against doctors in settlement talks. Also, individual providers are lumped in with large organizations.

     Committee Chair Liz Thomson, who has long been hostile to malpractice reform, lobbed an unfriendly amendment denying the $6 million cap to corporate-owned hospital systems. It would leave out most of the state’s hospitals, such as Presbyterian Health Services and Lovelace Health System, and protect only a few.

     Thomson, an Albuquerque Democrat, said she wanted to protect individual providers and local hospitals but not the biggest players, accusing them of sacrificing medical care to the bottom line.

     Questioned by House Minority Whip Alan Martinez, R-Bernalillo, Thomson floundered. She wanted to “tease out different groups,” she said, especially “huge multi-billion-dollar corporations,” but she couldn’t name any of them.

     “We promised our constituents we would fix medical malpractice,” Martinez said. “Now we’re starting to carve out people because we have an itch against corporate hospitals. You have taken a good negotiated bill and poisoned it with this amendment.”

     Rep. Jenifer Jones, a nurse from Deming, cut to the chase: “You said you would protect locally owned hospitals. This protects four… I have one hospital in my district that 29,000 people depend on for care. My hospital is owned by a corporation. If it’s not covered, it’s not good for New Mexicans. My hospital is still at risk.”

     With one poorly written amendment, Thomson exploded a delicate nonpartisan deal.

     Committee Republicans argued that the amendment defeats the purpose of HB 99 and leaves most of the state’s healthcare facilities vulnerable.

Committee Democrats (Thomson, Pamelya Herndon, Marianna Anaya, Joanne Ferrary, Eleanor Chavez and Kathleen Cates), repeated trial-lawyer talking points and ranted about multi-billion-dollar corporations, apparently unaware that without these corporate operators large swaths of the state would have no healthcare at all. I want to invite each one of them for coffee and explain how business actually works.

     For example, a doctor from Presbyterian’s hospital in Española testified that in 2025 his facility’s medical malpractice insurance premiums cost an additional $3.7 million, which was about the same amount as the MRI equipment they hoped to buy but couldn’t.

     The offending amendment and the gutted bill passed the committee.

As the hearing ended and Armstrong saw months of work evaporate, she said, “I will not keep my name on this bill if it becomes a band-aid.”

     But tomorrow is another day. 

     HB 99 now moves to the House Judiciary Committee, which Chandler chairs, so she can repair the bill. Strangely, it’s even possible that Thomson did us a favor by damaging HB 99 enough to make it palatable to the committee’s brainwashed Dems. Without the amendment, it probably would have failed.  

© 2026 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  1/26/26

Minnesota’s immigration violence drives NM legislation 

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     Watching the horror show in Minneapolis, I’ve been thinking about a woman I once met who told me she could trace her family back 20 generations in New Mexico. I’m wondering what would happen if she met ICE agents prowling for Hispanic people. Could she explain her genealogy before being yanked out of her car and handcuffed? Do ICE’s poorly trained, undisciplined “personnel” even know that Spanish-surnamed people lived here long before there was a United States?

     We’ve seen the answer for Native Americans, whose ancestors built civilizations here a thousand years before Europeans wondered what was across the sea. ICE arrested Lakota people in the Twin Cities. In Arizona, they threw Peter Yazzie to the ground, zip-tied his hands, detained him and told him they would get his kids next; the Navajo man had a driver’s license, birth certificate and certificate of Indian blood.

     We’re different here. New Mexico’s history is longer than that of the United States itself. We’re also a minority majority state. Little Liam Ramos in his blue bunny hat could be any kid in any New Mexico town. When I look at the people around me in public places, I fear for them when ICE expands its campaign here. 

     In this backdrop of violence, fear and rage, legislators are moving immigration bills.

     ICE’s street execution of Renee Good was fresh in mind as Rep. Eleanor Chavez, D-Albuquerque, introduced the Immigration Rights Act. House Bill 9 would bar local governments from contracting with the federal government to detain people for alleged immigration violations. Six other states have similar laws. It wouldn’t affect private CoreCivic operations in Cibola and Torrance counties that contract directly with ICE, but it would shut down the Otero County Processing Center. In November the three jails held more than 1,500 people, according to TRACreports.org; the Otero facility accounted for more than half.

     During a long, emotional debate Chavez argued that it was wrong for New Mexico to make money from immigrant detention. "We have the power to stand up against this campaign of terror and intimidation," she said. Her co-sponsor, Rep. Angelica Rubio, D-Las Cruces, derided “an economy built on cages.” Rubio has tried for years to pass such a bill, and this year national events will probably push the bill across the finish line.

     Rep. John Block, an Alamogordo Republican, put up such a strenuous fight against the bill that would cost 300 jobs in his district that the committee chair accused him of harassing the bill’s sponsors and expert witnesses. 

     Fellow Republican Rep. Stefani Lord worried about the impact on CoreCivic in Torrance County in her district. She questioned whether sponsors only care about inmates as long as they’re in New Mexico. Otero County Attorney R.B. Nichols testified that the bill would hurt three counties’ economies but not "address the issue that is trying to be stopped” because detainees would still be processed somewhere.

     To that point, SourceNM reported that dozens of immigrants unlawfully detained in Minneapolis have found themselves in the Torrance County Detention Facility, far from family and the legal help they need to defend themselves. 

     HB 9, blessed by the governor, passed its first committee 4 to 2 on a party-line vote. 

     That moved Sen. James Townsend, R-Artesia, to appeal to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to intervene because HB 9 “raises serious constitutional concerns.” It’s similar, he argues, to a CoreCivic lawsuit against New Jersey over a law that would have prevented the company from renewing a contract with ICE. A federal Court of Appeals ruled against the state. However, HB 9 and the New Jersey law are different, according to SourceNM. Testimony makes it clear the bill won’t affect CoreCivic.

     When Townsend posted his letter to Facebook, he got hundreds of likes from people who hope the move can save Otero County jobs. Not posting: the hospitality industry, the construction industry, the home maintenance industry, agriculture and any other sector that needs those workers.

     Townsend has given an administration itching to beat up Democratic governors and mayors another reason to send its storm troopers to New Mexico – unless somebody’s paying attention to recent New York Times-Sienna polling that finds 63% of Americans disapprove of how ICE is doing its job. This was before ICE murdered VA nurse Alex Pretti.

     Democrats planned to fast track HB 9 and other immigration bills. With Pretti’s bloody death, they’re now on a rocket sled to the governor’s desk.

© 2026 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  1/19/26

Legislators brush aside water management as crises loom 

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     “Water overuse is rampant and unaddressed by the state.” 

     Norm Gaume, one of the state’s foremost water experts, doesn’t mince words when he talks about New Mexico water. 

     “The Legislature treats water as if it’s a chronic issue that’s never going to be solved, but it’s an acute issue that’s eating our lunch,” he told New Mexico Press Women recently.

     Gaume is president of the nonprofit New Mexico Water Advocates, former director of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, and engineer-adviser to the New Mexico Commissioner for the Rio Grande Compact.

     He sees two crises.

     Crisis #1: For decades, the Middle Rio Grande (basically, the Albuquerque metro area) and Elephant Butte Irrigation District have overused water and delivered less than Texas is entitled to under the Rio Grande Compact. The multi-year Texas lawsuit is about to settle, and New Mexico will pay the piper. If you think this doesn’t affect you, think again.

     New Mexico will have to substantially reduce its groundwater pumping, keep the groundwater table high enough to allow the river to function, and deliver water required by the compact despite a hotter, dryer climate. It means buying and retiring thousands of acre-feet of groundwater. 

     “New Mexico is on the cusp of new violations due to overuse in the Middle Rio Grande,” Gaume said. “The state of New Mexico will violate the compact again in 2026, and the state will hit taxpayers again.” And Texas will sue again.

     Crisis #2: The state’s two water agencies, the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) and the Interstate Stream Commission, are not doing their jobs, Gaume wrote recently on nmwateradvocates.org – in part because they don’t have personnel and resources and in part because they’ve grown “tentative and cautious,” he wrote. “They are slow to make decisions, take initiative, and effectively manage projects to timely completion.”

     “The results of this neglect are huge taxpayer burdens, legal jeopardy for the state, danger for water users, and disregard for the river and species who depend on it.”

     We don’t lack water laws, he says, we lack enforcement. Laws passed with fanfare over the years remain unfunded and unimplemented.

     Remember that State Engineer John D'Antonio, one of the most capable men to hold the job, resigned in 2021 because he was fed up with lousy financial support and unfunded mandates. Two senior attorneys left with him. At the time OSE had 67 fewer employees than it did ten years earlier. For three years D’Antonio had asked for more money to stand up the state’s 50-year water plan, and for three years the governor and Legislature looked the other way.

     Political will is a bigger challenge than money, Gaume says. Other than a recent flutter of interest in produced and brackish water, optimistically called “new water,” the governor and Legislature simply aren’t interested in effective water management. And the Legislature no longer has a water champion, like Joe Stell, of Carlsbad, or Melanie Stansbury, who went on to become a Congresswoman.

     Recently Gaume was so concerned by OSE’s vague and timid funding requests presented to the Legislative Finance Committee that he filed an Inspection of Public Records Act request to obtain the original proposal to the Governor’s Office. He learned that OSE and ISC originally asked for 17 more positions and $3.5 million more in recurring spending.  

     That proposal “reads as an institutional warning and a cry for help,” Gaume wrote. It’s an admission that the two water agencies don’t have capacity to manage the state’s water. The tone of the narratives reflected “an operating environment defined by an overwhelming workload, deadlines, penalties, and diminishing discretion.”

     In his talk, Gaume added, “OSE didn’t tell legislators what they needed because they didn’t have the governor’s permission.” 

     Presently, the executive and legislative funding proposals are close, and neither includes new jobs.

     I’ve been writing about water since the heady days when we believed we had endless lakes underground. Scientists have disabused us of that idea, and yet I think we cling to an irrational notion that there’s water to be had, or, as I’ve often heard, “water runs uphill to money.” We also assume the water agencies are, somehow, minding the store. Gaume wants you to know they are not.

     He and other water experts I’ve quoted aren’t all doom and gloom. We have water, they say, but it’s finite and it must be managed. Otherwise, we’re pumping our future away.    

© 2026 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  1/12/26

Democrats blame everyone but themselves as doctors leave the state

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     Something I’m hearing lately is, “That’s medicine in New Mexico,” spoken by weary doctors trying to explain a two-month waiting list for a physical therapist or a delayed procedure.

     Every doctor I’ve seen this year is tired. Their staffs are tired. The surly nurse practitioner who treats me at one office has become too tired to be surly. This is because doctors leaving the state or retiring early throw more work on those who remain, and that safety net was already thin.

     Tired, stretched healthcare workers make more mistakes and become ever more vulnerable to New Mexico’s predatory medical malpractice lawyers. 

     Heading into the legislative session that begins Jan. 20, we know a lot about our doctor shortage, but if you’re expecting the Legislature to do something, don’t expect much. Lawmakers owned by the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association are twisting themselves into knots making nonsensical arguments about why you don’t have medical care.

     Here’s what we know going into the session:

     · There is a national doctor shortage, but it’s far worse in New Mexico. Between 2019 and 2024 we lost 248 doctors, or 8.1% of working physicians. In the same period the number of doctors nationally increased.

     · New Mexico has the oldest cadre of working doctors in the country, with 37% likely to retire by 2030. That includes my own beloved primary doctor.

     · In rural areas, some clinics are one retirement away from closing. Many communities have lost so many services that patients, including pregnant women, must drive long distances to get basic care.

     In 2021, when hospitals were slammed by the pandemic, Rep. Daymon Ely, a former president of the Trial Lawyers Association, rewrote the Medical Malpractice Act without any input from doctors. Legislators raised the caps on malpractice liability for individual providers from $600,000 to $750,000. They jacked up caps for hospitals from $600,000 to $6 million over five years, one of the highest caps in the country. They allowed the plaintiff to go after multiple defendants for the same large amounts. And they didn’t cap attorney fees or punitive damages.

     The new law hit New Mexico in a double tsunami of lawsuits and malpractice premiums. But it’s been a bonanza for trial lawyers.

     With spiking lawsuits came eye-popping payouts. Nearly all these lawsuits include punitive damages, which aren’t covered by malpractice insurance. 

     Dr. Mark Epstein, a former emergency doctor, wrote recently: “(O)ne of the most urgent concerns among physicians today (is) the ever-present threat of uncapped punitive damages.” Because one lawsuit can threaten a physician’s home, savings and future, “many physicians settle claims even when their care may have been appropriate. They settle quickly because the risk of losing everything is simply too great.”

     New Mexico’s malpractice premiums are now double that of other states.

     Dr. Todd Goldblum, a pediatric ophthalmologist, wrote recently: “The income I generate from surgery barely covers the insurance cost… In effect, I’m working to pay for protection from lawsuits rather than caring for patients.”

He has chosen to retire early. 

     Also retiring early is Dr. Debbie Vigil, an OB-GYN. Her first medical malpractice bill after the 2021 legislative session was double that of the previous year, even though she’d never had a malpractice judgement. After losing money in 2022 and 2023, she hoped for legislative relief, but lawmakers did nothing. She closed her practice in July 2023.

     New Mexico has become the place nobody wants to practice. Physician recruiting and retention are increasingly difficult, even for large organizations.

The Democrats who created this sinkhole attack the messenger, the nonprofit Think New Mexico, but never explain why everything changed after 2021. 

     To Rep. Liz Thomson, chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, it’s all a “phantom” problem and “political theater.” Rep. Thomson, why not call it a hoax? That’s working pretty well in Washington. 

     A doctor told me that she took a day from her inhumanly busy practice to testify before Thomson’s committee, only to have Thomson call the doctors before her liars. Thomson has claimed that reformers “point fingers at patient advocates’ and “propose solutions that harm a patient’s access to justice.” They have not. 

     Sen. Katy Duhigg, who, with Sen. Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Cervantes, torched the lone bill that could quickly increase providers in the last session, claims she’s helped craft a new, improved bill. Duhigg, a trial lawyer, papers over our doctor shortage by saying all states have a doctor shortage. Cervantes, like Thomson and Duhigg, carps about “the ‘trial lawyer’ narrative that is being used these days to raise money.”

     Is anyone getting tired of politicians telling us our experience isn’t real? That doctors are making it all up?

     Democrats and their trial-lawyer handlers created this mess. Only they can fix it.