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© 2025 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  10/6/25

Tracking every federal cut that will hit the state 

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     Legislators got the people’s business done in two reasonably efficient days during the recent special session, but not without some political theater. 

     This year, the governor and Democrats were on the same page in wanting to prepare the state for the Republican president’s funding cuts. And because of the Legislature’s newly created Federal Funding Stabilization Subcommittee, they had numbers.

     Few people know the state’s numbers like the subcommittee’s co-chair, Rep. Patty Lundstrom, D-Gallup, who is former chair of the House Appropriations and Finance Committee. She’s also a moderate who hasn’t been afraid to buck the Progressives.

     Republicans argue that the special session was unnecessary because impacts of the “big beautiful bill” won’t hit until 2027, if then. But it’s not that simple.

     The subcommittee, which began meeting in March, “listened to agencies that are super worried,” said Lundstrom. And it’s keeping an eye on moving targets – namely, when federal regulations governing Medicaid and other programs take effect. The Trump administration hasn’t released many regulations, and now with the government shutdown, Lundstrom expects further delays. When the subcommittee meets in November it will have “a matrix of everything that will hit the state.” 

     It appears that Medicaid may not change until 2027, but “changes are happening now to SNAP,” Lundstrom said. One in five New Mexicans relies on SNAP (formerly called food stamps) for food. Food banks around the state have been strained for months.

     The subcommittee also zeroed in on the Affordable Care Act insurance premium tax credits that expire at the end of the year. Some 6,300 New Mexicans could see their insurance costs spiral. As we know, saving the credits provoked the standoff between Democrats and the administration that triggered the government shutdown. 

     “The primary reason for the special session ties back to Obamacare,” Lundstrom said. “The subsidy ends before the end of the year. It could triple what they pay now. My fear is they (will lose coverage). It was our main reason to be up there.”

     Another priority was keeping rural hospitals open. Because of impending funding cuts to Medicaid six to eight rural hospitals could close within 18 months.

     Bills generated by the subcommittee include:

     · House Bill 1, which provides $16.6 million to maintain SNAP food benefits and $1.2 million to retain SNAP program staff at UNM and NMSU.

     · House Bill 2, which allows the state Health Care Affordability Fund to subsidize health insurance purchased through the state BeWell marketplace. The bill also removes income caps for purchasers. The cost is $17.3 million this fiscal year.

     · Senate Bill 1, which moves $50 million into the Rural Health Care Delivery Fund to stabilize healthcare services in rural and underserved areas.

     However, the picture keeps changing. Even as state lawmakers deliberated during the special session, the U.S. Department of Energy cancelled $135.2 million in projects in New Mexico as part of a larger swipe at blue states during the shutdown. Lundstrom predicts that eventually everybody who’s suffered a funding cut will appear before the subcommittee. State coffers can’t help everybody, leaders warn.

     The Democrats missed no opportunity for messaging around these bills and the session itself. The governor and legislative leaders talked about stepping up to protect the state’s most vulnerable residents, to keep food on their tables, to help rural hospitals stay afloat. 

     The Republicans did their own messaging, mostly about being shut out of the process. Because their party has done the same thing to Democrats in Congress, it’s an ironic complaint. On the other hand, it was an opportunity for Democrats to take the high road. They didn’t.

     Lundstrom supports including the Republicans. As a young member of the appropriations committee, she learned from her mentors, Reps. Lucky Saavedra and Kiki Varela, that everyone should have a voice in the process.

     “It’s a team approach,” she said. “Republicans represent different parts of the state with different needs. We need to hear from those parts of the state.”

     Considering how poorly the Dems are being treated in Congress these days, we might sympathize with their reluctance to work with the Rs here at home. But what if they rise above the mistrust and resentment to demonstrate that cooperation produces better solutions? That’s the best message of all. 

© 2025 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  9/29/25

Self-serving senators keep medical compacts out of special session

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     What is it about healthcare that inspires so much gibberish? 

     On the same day that the president was dispensing unfounded medical advice on Tylenol to pregnant women, state Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth was spinning a wild yarn about why lawmakers shouldn’t take up medical compacts during the upcoming special session.

     The interstate medical licensure compact is an agreement among states to recognize each others’ professional licenses. It allows healthcare workers licensed in one state to work in another that participates in the compact. They would instantly ease New Mexico’s shortage of medical professionals. And for people who now travel outside the state to see specialists that we don’t have, it would be a huge savings in time and money.

     Most states participate in the compacts because they make sense. New Mexico belongs only to the compact for nurses, and it works very well.      Attempts to approve compacts for doctors and other healthcare workers have failed, as I’ve written before, because of opposition from the powerful New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association.

     Now there are two new reasons to join compacts.

     The federal government is offering $50 billion to rural hospitals to offset effects of the “big beautiful bill,” but applicants in compact states will get preference. Deadline for the initial round of funding is Nov. 5. Waiting until the regular session to debate the compacts risks losing this funding, warns the nonpartisan Think New Mexico, which has championed compacts.

     Senate Finance Committee Chairman George Muñoz, who is a businessman and not a lawyer, said pointedly, “If the Legislature chooses to leave $100 million a year on the table, that may be a key issue.” Muñoz, who is from Gallup, knows well the precarious state of rural hospitals.

     The other new reason is that one in five service members turn down assignments at New Mexico Air Force bases because medical care is inadequate for that family. The rate of medical rejections here is double the Air Force average. Cannon in Clovis, Holloman in Alamogordo, and Kirtland in Albuquerque are among the top 17 Air Force bases for military rejection.

     The governor is ready to have medical compacts on her agenda for the Oct. 1 special session but said the Senate’s leaders are opposed.

     By that she means the five Senate Democrats who killed the physician compacts bill this year by amending it to death in the Senate Judiciary Committee: Joseph Cervantes, of Las Cruces; Katy Duhigg, Moe Maestas, Debbie O'Malley, and Mimi Stewart, of Albuquerque; and Peter Wirth, of Santa Fe. They’re all from New Mexico’s biggest cities and don’t know or care what’s happening to rural hospitals.

     Senate Majority Leader Wirth, a lawyer, told Source New Mexico he opposed adding medical compacts to the special agenda. “Healthcare policy should not be held hostage to short-term grant deadlines,” Wirth said. “Making permanent changes to professional licensing standards based on temporary funding availability and an ever-changing set of rules coming from the federal government sets a dangerous precedent.”

     Wirth added that lawmakers need time before the regular session in January “to examine how interstate compacts would interact with New Mexico’s existing laws and ensure that any changes truly serve the long-term interests of providers and patients.”

     Think New Mexico responded: “Lawmakers have had ample time to think through the compacts. New Mexico entered the nurse compact in 2003. Other compacts have been introduced repeatedly over multiple years. Seven of the ten compacts passed unanimously through the House in 2025. In March, the (physician) compact was debated at length in the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

     Wirth is dissembling. Pretending to be concerned and raising false issues, he will keep compacts out of the special session and buy time for the trial lawyers to mount a more elaborate attack during the regular session. 

     The governor has called them on it. In a news conference she said: “I worry there are so many trial lawyer leaders in the Senate that it gets caught there. I understand that they will tell you their perspective is patient safety, but if you have no doctors here and nobody can get in, I don’t see how you make the argument that you’re leaning in to patient safety.”

     Increasingly alone, Wirth and the trial lawyers’ Senate minions face a loud and growing clamor for compacts, medical malpractice reform and meaningful measures to retain and recruit doctors and other healthcare professionals.

     Look around, senators. You’re hurting people.