Something I’m hearing lately is, “That’s medicine in New Mexico,” spoken by weary doctors trying to explain a two-month waiting list for a physical therapist or a delayed procedure.
Every doctor I’ve seen this year is tired. Their staffs are tired. The surly nurse practitioner who treats me at one office has become too tired to be surly. This is because doctors leaving the state or retiring early throw more work on those who remain, and that safety net was already thin.
Tired, stretched healthcare workers make more mistakes and become ever more vulnerable to New Mexico’s predatory medical malpractice lawyers.
Heading into the legislative session that begins Jan. 20, we know a lot about our doctor shortage, but if you’re expecting the Legislature to do something, don’t expect much. Lawmakers owned by the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association are twisting themselves into knots making nonsensical arguments about why you don’t have medical care.
Here’s what we know going into the session:
• There is a national doctor shortage, but it’s far worse in New Mexico. Between 2019 and 2024 we lost 248 doctors, or 8.1% of working physicians. In the same period the number of doctors nationally increased.
• New Mexico has the oldest cadre of working doctors in the country, with 37% likely to retire by 2030. That includes my own beloved primary doctor.
• In rural areas, some clinics are one retirement away from closing. Many communities have lost so many services that patients, including pregnant women, must drive long distances to get basic care.
In 2021, when hospitals were slammed by the pandemic, Rep. Daymon Ely, a former president of the Trial Lawyers Association, rewrote the Medical Malpractice Act without any input from doctors. Legislators raised the caps on malpractice liability for individual providers from $600,000 to $750,000. They jacked up caps for hospitals from $600,000 to $6 million over five years, one of the highest caps in the country. They allowed the plaintiff to go after multiple defendants for the same large amounts. And they didn’t cap attorney fees or punitive damages.
The new law hit New Mexico in a double tsunami of lawsuits and malpractice premiums. But it’s been a bonanza for trial lawyers.
With spiking lawsuits came eye-popping payouts. Nearly all these lawsuits include punitive damages, which aren’t covered by malpractice insurance.
Dr. Mark Epstein, a former emergency doctor, wrote recently: “(O)ne of the most urgent concerns among physicians today (is) the ever-present threat of uncapped punitive damages.” Because one lawsuit can threaten a physician’s home, savings and future, “many physicians settle claims even when their care may have been appropriate. They settle quickly because the risk of losing everything is simply too great.”
New Mexico’s malpractice premiums are now double that of other states.
Dr. Todd Goldblum, a pediatric ophthalmologist, wrote recently: “The income I generate from surgery barely covers the insurance cost … In effect, I’m working to pay for protection from lawsuits rather than caring for patients.”
He has chosen to retire early.
Also retiring early is Dr. Debbie Vigil, an OB-GYN. Her first medical malpractice bill after the 2021 legislative session was double that of the previous year, even though she’d never had a malpractice judgment. After losing money in 2022 and 2023, she hoped for legislative relief, but lawmakers did nothing. She closed her practice in July 2023.
New Mexico has become the place nobody wants to practice. Physician recruiting and retention are increasingly difficult, even for large organizations.
The Democrats who created this sinkhole attack the messenger, the nonprofit Think New Mexico, but never explain why everything changed after 2021.
To Rep. Liz Thomson, chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, it’s all a “phantom” problem and “political theater.” Rep. Thomson, why not call it a hoax? That’s working pretty well in Washington.
A doctor told me that she took a day from her inhumanly busy practice to testify before Thomson’s committee, only to have Thomson call the doctors before her liars. Thomson has claimed that reformers “point fingers at patient advocates’ and “propose solutions that harm a patient’s access to justice.” They have not.
Sen. Katy Duhigg, who, with Sen. Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Cervantes, torched the lone bill that could quickly increase providers in the last session, claims she’s helped craft a new, improved bill. Duhigg, a trial lawyer, papers over our doctor shortage by saying all states have a doctor shortage. Cervantes, like Thomson and Duhigg, carps about “the ‘trial lawyer’ narrative that is being used these days to raise money.”
Is anyone getting tired of politicians telling us our experience isn’t real? That doctors are making it all up?
Democrats and their trial-lawyer handlers created this mess. Only they can fix it.