Our senior public servant who enabled the private health insurance industry to drive our state’s health policy over a cliff is heading to Washington, D.C. to be the next commerce chief. Hasta luego!

Finally, a good fit for Gov. Bill Richardson and a better opportunity for New Mexicans to pass real health care reform.

The governor’s palms were greased by the managed care industry which seems to have over-billed public coffers for administration at the expense of providing care, according to a recent Legislative Finance Committee audit, as reported in the Albuquerque Journal. Our local drive to uber-privatize what other countries consider a basic human right dupes us into thinking we need access to health insurance when we really need access to health care, instead. We can’t have both.

Righting this political wrong must top the list for Lt. Gov. Denish in January, especially now that we’re short on cash.

Fortunately, we have the knowledge it takes to fix our broken health care system in New Mexico while saving money and lives, so we’d be foolish to wait for a national health plan to save us. Besides, the same addiction to health industry money that plagues Gov. Richardson also plagues our national leaders. The Rube Goldberg-like result of privatizing a basic human need inflates costs and rations our health care in unfair, preventable ways that hurt and divide our communities.

Can we muster the courage and unity to fix health care financing instead of merely propping-up our privatized Medicaid managed-care profiteers who fail to cover us all despite increasing demands for more of our public funds? Si, se puede!

Common sense and a vast local brain trust tell us that further privatizing our health care funding or delivery is not the way forward in NM. Human casualties in underserved communities and health financing expertise is recounted in our Department of Health’s Racial/Ethnic Health Disparities Report Card, the Mathematica Health Policy study (commissioned by our governor), and in managed care research by University of New Mexico professors.

Will we listen to our health experts or industry power-brokers come January?

It’s time to innovate and follow the lead of our research-backed community health leaders and pass an updated version of the Health Security Act (HSA) this session. Like the federal Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, it eliminates our inefficient multi-payer system and aligns health needs with health care financing.

An additional New Mexico proposal for a public Health Care Authority is gathering steam and should be tied to the HSA to plug holes between health outcomes and reimbursement rates, and to ensure public oversight for quality and quantity improvements based on best-practices. Passing this hybrid now will transcend political divisions and serve our states uninsured and under-insured while it increases demand for a re-tooled, cost-effective primary and preventive care infrastructure.

Health reform is not rocket science. The rest of the industrialized globe produces equitably healthier societies at a fraction of the cost we spend on mismanaging our privatized system to fund gatekeepers who exclude us from the health care we need.

Publicly pooling health care delivery funds into one single, publicly accountable source aligns money with need instead of greed, and creates responsible stewardship and population health improvements.

The HSA — coupled with a balanced health care authority — will do just this.

Passing a hybrid of them now will save money and lives and bring New Mexicans together as a beacon of hope for a nation recently burned by unbridled corporate greed — which has no place in health care delivery or financing.

As for global commerce under a Richardson secretariat? Let’s hope he’ll use our failed health policy lessons at home to reject the divisive private model for managing the most basic human right of all — access to health care services.


Terry Schleder is an advocate for health care equity and reform in New Mexico as well as a doctoral student in public health at Walden University. Schleder earned a MPH from the University of New Mexico in 2003.