Submitted by Representatives Elizabeth “Liz” Thomson, Eleanor Chavez, and Kathleen Cates.
In the last Legislative Health and Human Services Committee, members were presented with the shocking reality that New Mexico is home to the largest percentage of private equity owned hospitals in the nation. As legislators, we are committed to demanding transparency and regulation with where your taxpayer dollars are going. We’re asking “Are the dollars going to provider salaries or are they going to shareholder profit?”
Legislators must ask for more transparency because taxpayers have spent over $230 million in just the last 3-years to support hospitals. However, a chunk of this money could be going to out of state corporate headquarters and shareholder profit instead of where we all want and need it to go – in the pockets of our New Mexico doctors, nurses, and healthcare providers.
Americans are paying more in out of pocket costs for healthcare this year than ever before according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. Doctors, nurses, and healthcare providers need higher pay and freedom to provide quality care.The solutions are clear, but feeding profits for insurance companies and out of state multi-billion dollar corporations are not one of them. As this is happening, health insurance companies have self-reported through the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, of making $18 billion in just the first 6 months of 2023!
This 2024 legislative session New Mexicans can count on us to demand transparency and oversight. We must be asking questions like: Are our taxpayer dollars actually being spent on improving the quality of care for New Mexicans, or are we just lining the pockets of wealthy out-of-state CEO’s and corporations who have little to no responsibility to New Mexico’s patients and taxpayers? It’s time we have accountability, oversight, and regulation in how our money is being spent and not leave it up to Wall Street’s bottom-line to determine our health and security.