By MERILEE DANNEMANN
© 2025 by Merilee Dannemann
In New Mexico, there aren’t enough doctors. There aren’t enough nurses. There aren’t enough hospitals, especially in small towns. There aren’t enough patients paying full price for their healthcare and too many on Medicaid.
You probably already know this. We talk about it all the time.
Two other factors contribute to this crisis. One is the presence of private for-profit ownership of hospitals and the other is our high rate of malpractice insurance.
But one of these two issues is claiming to be the solution to the other one, and that is pure nonsense.
Let’s set this straight. The people who represent trial lawyers claim that high malpractice insurance premiums will scare doctors and hospitals into improved safety. No, it won’t. It will scare doctors into leaving New Mexico, which is already happening. It will make the health care crisis in our state worse, and threaten your personal health and safety.
A certain amount of malpractice insurance is reasonable and appropriate. When a patient has suffered from a medical error, the patient should receive financial compensation and enough money to pay for the medical correction of the error, for the rest of the patient’s life if necessary. And compensation for pain and suffering.
But millions of dollars in punitive damages do not make medical facilities safer. High costs potentially make them less safe because they have less money to spend on whatever is necessary to correct the situation that caused the error.
The new group that speaks for trial lawyers claims to be the champion for protecting us New Mexicans from those evil private equity companies. The group is called New Mexico Safety over Profits (NMSOP), which appeared out of nowhere a few months ago with full page newspaper ads. It claimed to represent families that had suffered injuries from bad hospitals. But in the initial ads there were no names.
In January, Julianna Koob was an invited speaker to the progressive group Indivisible Albuquerque. Koob is the executive director of the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association but identified herself as a spokesperson for Safety Over Profit, confirming the connection between the two groups.
The NMSOP website has a downloadable 28-page publication explaining its argument against for-profit hospitals, making recommendations about how to recruit physicians, and defending the trial lawyers’ malpractice position.
But, in criticizing for-profit hospitals, it does not offer a solution that would assure those hospitals can stay open.
New Mexico is attempting to establish oversight of hospital acquisitions. I wrote about it last year (see www.triplespacedagain.com, September 2024). Legislation to set up that oversight (Senate Bill 14 committee substitute) is stuck in a Senate committee and not likely to be enacted this year. Troy Clark, president of the New Mexico Hospital Association, says the hospitals are not opposed to oversight but the bill goes too far in micromanaging hospital administration.
Hospitals need to serve their patients and not be the victims of corporate raiders. Oversight is one way to address that issue. If this bill doesn’t pass, lawmakers will need address the issue again.
But our egregious malpractice law does nothing to help New Mexicans who hope to be able to rely on a functioning health care system. It won’t be fixed in this almost-over legislative session.
Our whole nation is in a different crisis right now — the Trump administration attempting to dismantle the government institutions we rely on. States like New Mexico need to organize our resources to hold our democracy intact, and that includes our fragile health care system.
The last thing we need is an attack from another group with a separate agenda.
Here’s an idea: lawyers, go study employment law, change your specialty, represent some fired federal employees who need help and leave the doctors alone.
Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.