By SHERRY ROBINSON
All She Wrote
© 2026 New Mexico News Services

Sometimes I’m happy to be wrong.

Before the legislative session began, I didn’t have much faith that lawmakers would deliver on healthcare needs and told readers as much. But in the 30-day sprint we call governing, legislators pushed through a couple of the landmark bills, along with several important but less known measures.

And they showed some overdue love and respect to our dwindling number of doctors.

It’s a good beginning, but those of you who contacted your legislators, wrote letters to the editor or posted online should stay vigilant. The people who brought us this disaster are still in place.

There’s a lot of good news: Medical malpractice reform and a compact allowing interstate licensing of physicians passed. Democrats kept premiums affordable for some 46,000 self-employed workers, small business owners and others who depend on the Affordable Care Act.

Lawmakers eliminated facility fees for such services as outpatient care, vaccinations and telehealth services starting in 2027. These surprise charges added to the cost of routine care.

And we have in the budget: $300 million to double the size and enrollment of the UNM medical school, $24 million for rural residencies and rotations of doctors in training, $2 million for increased salaries for medical residents and fellows, and $3 million to recruit and retain medical educators. Plus, they expanded the Health Professional Loan Repayment Fund to $300,000 for doctors in return for four years of service in underserved areas of the state.

Now the bad news: Eight other compacts died in the Senate, six of them in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Of course. Chairman Joe Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, whined that they didn’t have time to thoroughly vet the bills, and yet the House moved them in a few days. In this bottleneck we lost greater access to health professionals we really need: physician assistants, audiologists and speech language pathologists, physical and occupational therapists, dentists and dental hygienists, emergency medical technicians, counselors, and psychologists.

Rural areas rely on their EMTs, and yet New Mexico is short about 2,500 of them, according to national benchmarks.

Compacts allow licensed healthcare providers in other states to serve patients in New Mexico and streamline the licensing process for providers moving here. Proponents have said compacts are the easiest way to improve healthcare access in the state.

Some Senate Democrats claimed that the state Regulation and Licensing Department “doesn’t have the capacity to administer them all, even though the department disputes that,” reported Think New Mexico, a nonpartisan think tank that has championed the compact bills.

The group also noted that dozens of groups supported the bills while the only opposition came from the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association.

Two other disappointments: The tax package that passed didn’t include a repeal of the state’s gross receipts tax on medical services, the only tax of its kind in the country. And a bill to create a pathway to licensure for physicians trained in other countries failed in the Senate.

Eighteen other states have such laws.

After the session, House Democrats and House Republicans each took credit for the successes and ignored contributions of the opposing party. Said House Dems: “We expanded access by joining interstate healthcare compacts, lowered costs by strengthening the state’s Health Care Affordability Fund and invested in student repayments for medical providers … We made smart, targeted changes to address concerns we heard from both patients and providers about our state’s medical malpractice laws.”

Said House Minority Leader Gail Armstrong: “For more than six years, New Mexico has been losing doctors… Nothing changed until Republicans made ending the status quo a priority … Republicans kept introducing legislation, demanding hearings and pressing progressive leadership to take the issue seriously… That persistence, backed by strong public support, finally paid off with the passage of meaningful medical malpractice reform.”

It’s politics. It’s also dishonest. Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, deserves our thanks for shepherding the medical malpractice bill, but without Republican support it would have died because too many Democrats still listen more to trial lawyers than to their constituents.

The eight failed compacts had Dem opposition.

We celebrated when the governor signed the medical malpractice reform bill and the doctor compact, but let’s not kid ourselves. The same people who killed those bills last year and tried to kill malpractice again this year – and nearly succeeded – are still in office. The Senate is turning a blind eye to conflicts of interest when the Legislature’s trial lawyers who sue doctors can hold up bills.

I wish I was wrong about this.