Sherry Robinson 12-30-24+

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Paid family leave backers ignore employers

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

The family leave bill is another great idea New Mexico can’t afford.

Progressive Democrats passed House Bill 11 through two committees and the House, changing its name and its more onerous provisions while ignoring the state’s employers, who are saying loud and clear that they can’t afford it. For many, it would be disastrous.

The rebranded Welcome Child and Family Wellness Leave Act would allow workers to take up to six weeks of paid time off to care for a loved one, deal with serious health issues, welcome a foster child, grieve the loss of a child, or recover from domestic violence. New parents could take 12 weeks of leave, keep their jobs and receive $3,000 a month for the first three months.

Supporters would pay for this through a tax on employers (they call it a “contribution”) of 0.15% of their payroll, or $1.50 on every $1,000; employees would “contribute” 0.2% of their income, or $2 of every $1,000 they earn. Businesses with fewer than five employees would be exempt, but their employees would still be eligible for benefits.

Opponents like the New Mexico Chamber of Commerce say this would be the largest tax increase in state history. The new child benefit would come from the state Early Childhood Education and Care Department – still taxpayer money. New Mexico would be the poorest state to create a paid family leave program.

For the last House committee hearing, the room was packed, and 25 people stood in the hall hoping to testify. Lawmakers heard employers say the bill puts them in an impossible situation. They can try to find a temporary employee in a tight labor market and then train them only to dismiss them six weeks or three months later, when they’ll be on the hook for unemployment. Or they can stretch an already stretched staff and pay overtime to maintain the absent employee’s duties.

This is particularly acute for caregivers like Santa Maria El Mirador in Rio Arriba and Santa Fe counties, which serves people with intellectual disabilities. CEO Patricia Romero worries about staff burnout as well as quality of care for her clients.

Restaurant owners grapple with the same issues. “This will kill restaurants,” said one. “It will hurt the people it’s intended to help.”

Shaylynn Jim said she drives 300 miles a week from the Navajo Reservation to her job in Gallup. The employee contribution might not sound like a lot of money, she said, but “I need every penny I rightfully earn.”

Tom Patterson, of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, told the committee that bill sponsors don’t understand the demands of agriculture. “When work needs to be done, it needs to be done,” he said.

The paid family leave bill has been the source of much bad behavior in the Roundhouse.

Last year, after the bill failed by two votes in the House, its last stop before the governor’s desk, progressives cannibalized their own – targeting and punishing Democratic moderates who opposed the bill. They got rid of three by running candidates against them in primaries.

One of their victims was Rep. Harry Garcia, of Grants. After his fellow Grants legislator, Rep. Eliseo Alcon, resigned and then died, it appeared Garcia might return as Alcon’s replacement, but he didn’t live in Alcon’s district. The governor recently appointed Martha Garcia, of Pine Hill, and Garcia promptly voted against HB 11 in the House. She joined four moderates who voted no: Patty Lundstrom of Gallup, Wonda Johnson of Church Rock, Marian Matthews of Albuquerque, and Joseph Sanchez of Alcalde.

Progressives probably have the votes to shove HB 11 down everyone’s throats, and it will hurt the economy just as rash actions by Republicans in Washington D.C. are also hurting the economy.

Each side assumes it will be in power forever. They ignore economic consequences at their peril.

Patients sound off about NM medical malpractice costs

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

This is how bad New Mexico’s medical malpractice problem is.

Reader Carl Hester, of Hobbs, writes that when he went to a doctor in Lubbock, he had to sign a statement, apparently intended for New Mexicans, saying “any lawsuit or other dispute arising from or related to medical care I receive from (the provider) will be brought only in an appropriate court located in Lubbock.”

New Mexico’s reputation for doctor targeting, judge shopping and sky high awards has spread to Texas, where a great many people living on the East Side go for medical care. Texas providers feel the need to protect themselves.

Our own providers don’t have that luxury. It’s one reason why the New Mexico Medical Society says it’s difficult to recruit and retain doctors.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Senate Bill 176 to cap attorney fees in medical malpractice lawsuits at 25% of the money awarded if a case is settled or 33% if a case goes to trial. It would also send 75% of punitive damages to a new public fund designed to improve patient safety.

SB 176 is one in a package of bills advanced by Think New Mexico, a nonpartisan think tank, to address our shortage of healthcare workers.New Mexico ranks second highest in the nation for medical malpractice lawsuits per capita. The number is more than twice the national average. New Mexico’s medical malpractice insurance premiums are nearly twice those of Arizona, Colorado and Texas and still rising. And yet, many malpractice insurance companies lose money.

We’ve gotten here because of the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association’s grip on legislators, many of them lawyers.

I asked my dermatologist about his experience. He said doctor friends have gotten tired of being in legal crosshairs and moved to Montana and Texas. In 20 years he’s been sued three times, once for himself and twice for his physician assistants, even though each time a medical review board voted unanimously in his favor.

Recently, commentary erupted on the listserve Next Door after an Albuquerque breast surgeon asked her patients to contact legislators about the lack of doctors in New Mexico. The patient wrote, “Lawyers giving money to the people we voted into office to not cap the money people get for suing the doctors is the one reason lawmakers don’t do anything about the issue.”

Here’s a sampling of the responses:

“My wife's (doctor) just retired early. She said if she wasn't about to retire she would have left this state to practice elsewhere. She said this is a very hostile state to practice medicine in. The legal expectation is that (doctors) should be God and that no possible complication should ever happen, even if it was not the fault of the provider.”

“Doctors and surgeons have left New Mexico due to the high cost of medical malpractice insurance. It is high because there are no legislative restrictions on what trial lawyers can sue for. New Mexico's legislators, Republican and Democrat, receive huge amounts of campaign contributions from trial lawyers to keep it this way.”

“My daughter is a soon-to-be third-year medical student (out of state) & would love to come back to Albuquerque even for residency… as she loves it here but keeps getting warned not to do it.”

“As someone who actively recruits physicians, (I can say) they don't want to come here because of the med mal climate. Not only are the premiums sky high, $105k for an Ob/Gyn, but the threat of getting sued in this state and then facing punitive damages on top of the med mal price tag is outrageous. We need tort reform. The trial attorneys have all the money and pay lobbyists to protect their cash cow. They also control the House and Senate so any substantial change will likely not happen.”

“You are exactly right about this! Even those physicians who love this state have to decide how much risk and actual abuse they can take!”

Watch what happens to SB 176. You’re going to hear it’s victim blaming. It’s not. You’re going to hear it’s about healthcare industry profits. That’s a separate, unrelated issue. Who is going to ask the big question: Is it right for lawyers to kneecap our healthcare system so they can harvest millions?

A bigger conversation about water

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

For the two sponsors of the Strategic Water Supply bill now before the Legislature, this is personal.

Rep. Susan Herrera, D-Española, said she gets asked frequently why she’s carrying the governor’s controversial bill. She explains that her district is rural and agricultural.

“Eighty percent of the people coming to me with problems have water problems,” she told the House Agriculture, Acequia and Water Resources Committee. “Climate change is real. I’ve seen things in the last five years I never thought were possible...

“This bill starts a bigger conversation about water. We know there will be 25% less water in the next 50 years. This is the only bill that tries to create a new water resource.”

Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, said he recently ran across testimony about water by his late father, who was mayor of Gallup. Fifty years later, his district and the state are still grappling with the water supply.

“We have to do something,” he told me. “Are we really putting produced water to best use? Can we use brackish water? That’s what will save cities and water systems.”

House Bill 137 would try to preserve surface water by using brackish water and produced water from oilfields for industrial development but not for drinking water, agriculture or nature. It would create the Strategic Water Supply Fund with a $75 million appropriation and a new tax on the oil and gas industry of 5 cents a barrel on some produced water. The money would be used to incentivize water treatment projects and send $28.8 million to New Mexico Tech for aquifer mapping and groundwater characterization and $4 million to NMSU to study potential projects for the program.

This bill is different from last year’s strategic water bill, said Rebecca Roose, the governor’s infrastructure advisor. The administration gathered more data about market mechanics, science, demand and potential use. While private industry is already doing some work, she said the state’s involvement “puts us in the position of moving projects forward faster.” And there’s an economic development angle in matching projects with industries like data centers that don’t need potable water.

New Mexico has some 650 trillion gallons of water sitting unused in deep, salty (brackish) aquifers, according to the New Mexico Environment Department. Oil and gas companies generate more than 80 billion gallons of produced water, although 60% is reused. That’s enough to make a huge difference to the state’s water supplies.

“New technology can clean deep brackish water and produced water for a range of uses, reducing pressure on our freshwater resources,” says an NMED fact sheet.

However, during hours of testimony, citizens and experts argued that assertion. Whether they were for or against, they all claimed that science supports their position.

On the pro side was Mayor Denny Herrera, of the Village of Cuba in Sandoval County. “We’ve had two water emergencies in two years,” he said. “People are hauling water daily because their wells went dry.” The village has been working with a company on a water treatment plant based on ion exchange technology.

On the other side were environmental groups like Wild Earth Guardians that said, “The state shouldn’t subsidize unproven technology that produces toxic waste.”

And the oil industry isn’t crazy about a new tax. Rep. Angelica Rubio, D-Las Cruces, said she’s visited fracking sites and tried hard to learn about produced water. “There’s still not enough evidence that produced water can be treated,” she said, but she sees the potential of brackish water.

HB 137 was held for further discussion.

I can understand Rubio’s hesitation. Because I spent so many years covering business I have greater faith in industry to solve this, but more than that, I believe we don’t have time to waste. State Engineer-designate Elizabeth Anderson was right when she said, “The time is now to do this.”

Dems snub medical malpractice reform

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

Long before the legislative session started, a full-page ad accosted readers with this headline: “Medical corporations & insurance companies blame patients harmed by medical malpractice for the healthcare crisis so they can distract us from the billions of dollars in profit that go to their out-of-state corporate headquarters.”

Whoa! Nobody is blaming patients who are victims of medical malpractice.

And, looking at New Mexico’s ragged hospital network, there’s more red ink than black ink. The New Mexico Medical Society has been clear that spiraling malpractice premiums are an obstacle to physician recruiting, but some Democrats still don’t see the urgency, and it’s hurting all of us.

In October Think New Mexico, a nonpartisan think tank, rolled out a plan to solve New Mexico’s healthcare worker shortage. One element involves reforming the state’s medical malpractice act. New Mexico ranks second highest in the nation for medical malpractice lawsuits per capita. The number is more than twice the national average. New Mexico’s medical malpractice insurance premiums are nearly twice those of Arizona, Colorado and Texas and still rising. And yet, many malpractice insurance companies lose money.

“The high cost of malpractice insurance, and the high likelihood of being sued discourage doctors and other health care workers from practicing in New Mexico,” the report concluded.

Right after Think New Mexico announced its plan, the above advertisement appeared, claiming “real solutions to the healthcare crisis.” It was paid for by New Mexico Safety Over Profit (NMSOP), a new group. Its website lists a spokeswoman but not officers, board members or funding sources. It appears to be closely aligned with the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association.

NMSOP’s big concerns are “corporate greed” and “holding corporations responsible for harm.” The group wants you to believe our ills are the result of “medical corporations and insurance companies (that) prioritize profit to take back to their out of state headquarters and shareholders.” To be fair, ownership by private equity firms and corporate giants is a huge issue, but that’s nationally and not so much here.

With this backdrop, Sen. Martin Hickey, D-Albuquerque and the Legislature’s only doctor, and Sen. Pat Woods, R-Broadview, introduced Senate Bill 176 to reform New Mexico’s medical malpractice system. The bill would cap attorney fees in medical malpractice lawsuits, end lump-sum payouts, and send 75% of punitive damages to a new public fund designed to improve patient safety.

SB 176 would cap fees at 25% of the money awarded if a case is settled or 33% if a case goes to trial. Currently, New Mexico has no limit on attorney fees. It would return to a pay-as-you-go system for the expenses of treatment instead of the lump-sum payouts delivered by Democrats and the trial lawyers in a dubious “reform” bill in 2021. The payout is based on an estimate. What if the estimate is wrong?

And SB 176 would also use punitive damage verdicts to improve patient safety and reduce future malpractice. Currently, New Mexico allows unlimited punitive damages, which Think New Mexico considers “a windfall for the attorneys bringing the cases.”

This should not be a partisan issue. But a day after Republicans named malpractice insurance reform as a priority, three Albuquerque-area Democrats repeated NMSOP talking points, blaming “corporate greed” for healthcare issues.

Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, defended the “compromises” in 2021 and 2023 that led us to this sorry state. He told the Albuquerque Journal that “all parties were on board and the measures passed with bipartisan support.” In fact, the so-called support by less enthusiastic lawmakers was only because they feared something worse.

“Undoing these important changes to the law now will only harm patients and allow insurance companies to evade responsibility for compensating hurting families,” said Wirth, a lawyer. NMSOP couldn’t have said it better.

The governor recognizes the problem: “Insurance rates for doctors and healthcare providers shouldn’t be any higher in New Mexico than in neighboring states, and they most certainly shouldn’t be twice the national average.”

Her solution is state-sponsored medical malpractice insurance, but she hasn’t offered details. Contrary to what you might hear, reformers do want to protect injured patients, but they would ratchet down attorney payouts from stratospheric to earthly.

Future disaster costs shadow state tax bills

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

Republicans want to get rid of personal income taxes in the state, and they’ve made it their priority for the current legislative session. It’s a big step, but in recent years a surge in oil and gas revenues have fattened state coffers so much that we can think about it.

“Eliminating the personal income tax will return more than $2 billion a year to New Mexico’s families, without disrupting our public services or tax credits that many families rely on,” wrote House Minority Leader Gail Armstrong, R-Magdalena, in an op-ed.

Freshman Rep. Elaine Sena Cortez, R-Hobbs, has said she will carry legislation to eliminate the personal income tax, noting that nine states don’t tax personal income.

You can’t deny the appeal. Wouldn’t we all like to be free of state income taxes?

But lately the president has lobbed a deal killer into this proposal and the Democrats’ plans to reduce taxes. The whole picture of state revenues just changed.

While touring disaster areas in North Carolina and California, the president said he was thinking about getting rid of FEMA. “It’s very bureaucratic, and it’s very slow,” he said.

He’s got that right.

“I’d like to see the states take care of disasters,” he said. “Let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen.” That would be faster and cheaper than sending in FEMA. He suggested that Washington might provide money directly to the states.

The way FEMA has operated for decades is that after a major disaster, local officials ask the president to declare an emergency. That ask tells the president that the disaster is beyond local and state governments’ ability to respond, according to an Associated Press explainer. The emergency declaration opens the federal purse and involves FEMA, which can reimburse local governments for rebuilding roads, bridges and public buildings. The agency will also help individuals with short-term needs like food, clothing or a motel room or longer-term help like rent assistance or some money to help rebuild. FEMA will also pay for projects intended to protect the community in the future.

It’s not there to manage disaster recovery or to make disaster victims whole.

As I’ve written previously, from its creation in 1979 to 2003, FEMA was a small, agile, independent agency that responded quickly. After it became a division of the Department of Homeland Security, it became another bureaucratic cog. Decision making, spending and communications bogged down. President Trump criticized former President Biden for not fixing the problem, but none of the presidents have fixed the problem.

Whatever criticism we have of FEMA, we can probably agree that it’s better than nothing. Are states ready to shoulder these responsibilities? I doubt it. New Mexico certainly isn’t. Is it even cost efficient for states to replicate 50 little FEMAs?

Now throw in politics. The president plans to help red North Carolina, which voted for him, but he’s placing conditions on help for blue California, which didn’t vote for him and whose governor he despises. During his first term he held up disaster aid to Puerto Rico and California. The traditional political promise – I’m here to serve you whether or not you voted for me – no longer holds.

How might New Mexico fare? I predict New Mexico will look more like California than North Carolina in terms of the administration’s future treatment.

Returning to the president’s recent comments, the big question is how much the administration is willing to pay states for disaster recovery. The answer so far is, less. Much less. And yet the disasters are getting bigger, and we are even now in another drought.

Until we know more, it’s premature to give up any revenue streams.

Protecting homeowners and keeping insurers in New Mexico

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

When we look back at fires, California’s and New Mexico’s, we’ll see that the victims got burned twice – once during the event and again when they tried to rebuild and found they couldn’t get insurance. That’s if they had any to begin with. Many don’t.

This is not a rant about insurance companies. Two of my early jobs were with insurance companies. I spent years writing about them as a business writer, so I don’t expect them to act like charities.

New Mexico and California have property insurance problems driven by climate change. The disasters are growing so big and so costly that insurers can no longer provide coverage. Many have been losing money. But California’s insurance troubles are far worse than ours.

The state of California placed price controls on home insurance; any increase in premiums above 7% requires approval from the state insurance commissioner, who is elected. He wants to keep his job, so he’s said no to insurance companies wanting to raise rates to match their risk, and companies have left California. Last year, State Farm, the biggest home insurance provider in the state, cancelled thousands of policies in risky places saying that in the event of a major disaster the allowable premiums would tank the company.

With no other options, Californians have turned to the FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) Plan, reported the Los Angeles Times. Provided by the state to cover uninsurable people and funded by a surcharge on insurers still doing business there, it provides limited coverage. That fallback is now strained.

California voters have only themselves to blame for their insurance drought. In 1988 they passed Proposition 103, which required the state to approve premium increases.

California’s ballot proposition system is to governance what chewing gum is to hot pavement. If anybody ever suggests introducing it in New Mexico, vote them out of office quickly.

It’s a bit comforting that we’re not in California’s boat, but New Mexicans have serious issues too. In August the Legislative Finance Committee, meeting in Ruidoso, heard testimony from the state’s insurance regulator that insurers are increasingly reluctant to renew or approve policies in riskier areas since this year’s wildfires, and home insurance premiums have spiked. (We can probably add Roswell’s floods to the list.)

LFC Chairman and Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, commented, “I got denied on a commercial property in the middle of Gallup next to a fire hydrant because of wildfires.”

The Office of the Superintendent of Insurance (OSI) sued State Farm, the state’s largest insurer, saying it improperly denied some claims after the South Fork and Salt fires. The state lost, reported Source New Mexico.

New Mexico hasn’t seen quite the exodus of insurance companies as California; despite losses in 2016, 2017 and 2022, they’re mostly profitable here. Nationally insurers have paid out more than they’ve taken in over the last ten years.

New Mexico also has a FAIR Plan, and it too is a fallback that costs more than conventional insurance and provides minimal coverage -- $350,000 for homes and cash value, not replacement cost, for a home that’s lost. Protection is too thin to get a mortgage. You can see how this cascades into economic impacts on builders and local economies.

OSI can’t use a stick to force coverage, so it’s leaning toward carrots. That might mean property owners creating defensible spaces around their homes or new zoning regulations that prevent building in high-risk areas. It might mean beefing up FAIR plans but stopping short of competition with insurers. Fire departments might ask for more help.

We’ll probably see insurance-related bills in the upcoming legislative session. Let’s hope they get serious attention and don’t get lost in the usual crush of a 60-day session.

Tech honchos may break immigration logjam to get workers

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

She’s studying computer engineering at UNM on a student visa. Her husband, who has graduated, is working in IT until his student visa runs out, and then he’ll return to school and try to juggle work and studies to stay in the United States. Going home is not an option because there is nothing for them in their small, impoverished country.

“All my friends are here or in Canada or Australia,” he says.

Both would be hired in a heartbeat if our immigration system met today’s needs. This young couple and thousands like them are at the center of the recent, much publicized kerfuffle between the president-elect’s new friends in Silicon Valley and his MAGA followers. Companies, especially tech companies, need these highly trained employees, and they’re up against a smaller American workforce and an immigration system that’s frozen in time.

Specifically, Elon Musk and the tech giants want more H-1B visas. This is a short-term visa typically extended to foreigners in science and engineering.

Why do we need them? If you look inside our engineering schools in New Mexico and nationwide you will find a great many people from Asia, India and the Middle East. Americans, not so much. Trump appointee Vivek Ramaswamy blames this on a culture that “has venerated mediocrity over excellence” and celebrates “the jock over the valedictorian.”

That’s not the case. In the 1990s, when my job at UNM was to publicize the engineering school, American students with a head for numbers were drifting away from engineering in favor of business school, which they found more exciting. Foreign students still consider engineering a good profession, and the universities are happy to have them. But once they graduate, they want to stay here, and we need them.

The president-elect, who temporarily suspended the H-1B program during his first term, may have a change of heart since tech honchos befriended him during his recent campaign. Lately he appointed venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan, a friend of Elon Musk, as a senior policy adviser, and Krishnan recommended ending certain country caps for green cards, H-1Bs and other skilled immigration programs. Trump’s far right base opposes any new immigrants, educated or not.

Long before Musk and Ramaswamy joined the Trump inner circle, companies of all kinds were complaining that they couldn’t get the specialized workers they need because of limits on the H-1B program. One of their public voices has been the conservative-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which wrote in 2022 that a major obstacle was “the antiquated, arbitrary quotas on the employment-based visa options.” Quotas for green cards and temporary worker visas were set in 1990. Since then the size of the U.S. economy has more than quadrupled while visa numbers approved by Congress have hardly budged.

“These 30-year-old visa caps are woefully insufficient to meet the needs of the American economy today,” the organization wrote. In fiscal 2023, just one in six applicants for an H-1B visa was approved. The program reaches its quotas in weeks, and backlogs exceeded 1.8 million.

The U.S. Chamber concluded that because companies can’t hire the talent they need, they can’t grow. That hurts existing employees. And the situation is only growing worse.

“When the federal government will only allow American businesses to meet approximately 11% of their high-skilled workforce needs, it is long past time for Congress to update our immigration laws to reflect the needs of today’s economy,” the chamber said.

After covering business for many years, I can tell you that business people are practical, focused and not usually given to ideological rhetoric. In the current row, my money is on them. Their donations to the inauguration fund, their pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago all mean access, and it’s aroused some suspicion. But it may be that these business execs finally get the ball rolling on immigration reform when many others have failed.

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