Paul J. Gessing

Gov. Lujan Grisham recently went on the TV show Face the Nation to decry potential cuts to Medicaid. She even claimed the reforms would “destroy health care as we know it.” Pretty much every elected Democrat in New Mexico supports Medicaid as it currently exists. This is partially because they view it as an “economic development” program. That’s because the federal government picks up 72% of the bill while New Mexico pays “only” 28%.

That may sound like a great deal for New Mexicans until you realize that Medicaid spending is expected to grow by a mind-blowing 27% next year and spend an astonishing $15.5 billion. That’s 1/3rd larger than the State’s fast-growing general fund budget which pays for education and public safety (to name just two priorities). In other words, even with “just” 28% of that coming from New Mexicans, that’s STILL $4.34 billion state tax dollars. Of course, New Mexicans also pay federal taxes and bear the $36 trillion in federal debt, but who’s counting?

As part of their efforts to find savings to make way for the Trump tax cuts Republicans in Washington have put forth a few ideas that would constrain Medicaid spending. This is hardly a disaster for New Mexico, but our politicians have grown accustomed to “free” money and a bloated Medicaid budget.

As The Hill notes, “Provider taxes have been a lucrative loophole for states to get more federal Medicaid funding by taxing providers and then returning the money to them in the form of higher reimbursements for treatment.” The Republicans’ proposal would freeze all state taxes at their current rates and prevent states from imposing additional taxes. New Mexico has been imposing these taxes for years and In 2024 the Legislature passed a provider tax that helped the State fleece taxpayers in the other 49 states of $1.5 billion. This is abuse of the Medicaid system. Unfortunately, the Republicans’ plan only prohibits future such schemes, not existing ones.

It’s worth mentioning that New Mexico could easily afford to replace federal Medicaid dollars with its own money. The State is sitting on $61 billion in “savings.” In the recently-completed legislative session the State has set up a mechanism to accumulate another $2 billion for the explicit purpose of “replacing” federal Medicaid dollars if indeed cuts happen.

Another initiative of Congressional Republicans’ (again from The Hill) is “work requirements.” Under the proposal, states must enforce “community engagement” requirements on Medicaid enrollees beginning in 2029. Community engagement is defined as 80 hours of work, community service or a work program each month. Other options include at least half-time enrollment in an educational program or a combination of the available options.

We’d love to see that moved up (why wait until 2029), but with New Mexico’s abysmal workforce participation rate remains depressed by any historical metric. It is lower than it was before COVID and it is lower than it was going back to 1976. Adding work requirements to Medicaid is just common sense. Such requirements would actually improve the lives of the large numbers of New Mexicans who continue to sit on the sidelines of our labor force.

While Lujan Grisham and Democrats will undoubtedly claim that the sky is falling on New Mexico and other Medicaid-dependent states, reform of this bloated program is long overdue. Medicaid needs to be reformed dramatically and that really needs to come from the federal level.

We’d like to see the federal government block grant Medicaid dollars (and then shrink the program over time). That would both remove the incentive for New Mexico and other states to “game” the system as they clearly have been doing AND it would place the federal government on more sound budgetary footing.

If large numbers of New Mexicans fall through the cracks as Lujan Grisham and others claim, the State can easily step in with its own considerable resources.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.

Dr. Joe Salgado
Artesia General Hospital

As a physician and CEO of Artesia General Hospital, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing the strength, resilience, and compassion of this community every day. I’ve also seen how access to quality healthcare—close to home—can change lives.

That’s why I’m urging every eligible voter in our district to vote “Yes” on the upcoming renewal of the hospital mill levy.

This isn’t a new tax. It’s a continuation of local support that has been in place for decades—support that has made it possible for Artesia General Hospital to grow from a small, local facility into a trusted regional healthcare provider. Thanks to the foresight of community leaders who established our hospital district, we’ve built a legacy of care that generations of families rely on.

So why does this matter now?

AGH is a not-for-profit hospital. That means every single dollar we receive—from patient fees, insurance reimbursements, or the mill levy—is reinvested into the services we provide. The mill levy plays a crucial role in covering our operational expenses. This in turn frees up other funding to go toward state-of-the-art equipment, infrastructure upgrades, new specialty services, and the recruitment and retention of medical staff.

In short, the mill levy makes it possible for us to do more—and do it better—for the people we serve.

Across New Mexico, many rural hospitals depend on similar mill levies to maintain vital services. These community-approved funds help ensure patients in smaller towns don’t have to travel hours to get basic or specialized care. They allow hospitals like AGH to offer diagnostic imaging, women’s health services, surgical care, and primary care right here in our backyard.

Without this stable funding, the services we’ve come to depend on could face serious strain.

This is a vote about keeping care local, accessible, and high quality. It’s about ensuring our friends, neighbors, and families can continue to receive compassionate, expert care without leaving the community we love.

If you’re voting by mail, please remember to follow the county’s requirements: include your signature and the last four digits of your Social Security number and return your ballot on time. You can also vote in person at the county substation.

I’m incredibly proud of the team at Artesia General Hospital and the work we do together every day. With your support, we can continue building a healthier, stronger community—now and for generations to come.

Let’s keep healthcare close to home. Vote “Yes” on the mill levy renewal.

Dr. Joe Salgado is the chief executive officer of Artesia General Hospital.

Sherry Robinson

During recent debates over the president’s big beautiful budget bill, I wanted to know how the safety net would work. After all, New Mexico has the nation’s highest per-capita rate of Medicaid coverage with 840,000 people enrolled, more than 40% of the state’s population.

Nationally, Medicaid covers more than 71 million poor, elderly and disabled people. The big beautiful bill would cut the program by nearly $700 billion over 10 years and take health coverage away from more than 10 million people.

The big numbers and potential impacts generated endless debate about poor people, and what I heard made me wonder if the debaters had met any actual poor people. I have, and they’re not as lazy as the right would have you believe.

Let me introduce you to some neighbors from my time on the wrong side of the tracks.

Across the street was a woman I’ll call Mary, a single mom with three boys. She was a cleaning lady who worked long hours in other people’s homes to pay the rent. My next door neighbor was an older woman who was in poor health and on Social Security disability. That wasn’t enough to support two teenagers still living at home, so the fourth member of the household, an adult daughter I’ll call Alex, worked a low-wage retail job. Alex was the family’s primary supporter.

One major change mandated by the bill is work requirements for able-bodied, single adults. Sounds reasonable, right? What you might not know is that most Medicaid recipients are already working. So Alex will have to document 80 hours of work each month or prove she qualifies for an exception. But Alex is a high-school dropout who might have a hard time negotiating the new red tape. She might also be reluctant to take time off work, at a loss in pay, to visit a state office and make her case.

Benefits experts predict that millions of Alexes will get lost in the new system and lose their coverage. That seems to be the goal of the new requirement. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects the number of uninsured Americans will increase by 7.6 million.

The bill also requires states to check Medicaid eligibility more frequently, which the governor has said is a costly new administrative burden on top of Medicaid cuts the state can’t afford.

The big beautiful bill frays another strand of the safety net by cutting $300 billion (30%) from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly food stamps, which helps 42 million people. It’s the biggest reduction in the program’s history. More than 2.7 million households will lose benefits.

SNAP too has a job requirement. This one sweeps parents like Mary the cleaning lady into that category, so she would have to take time off work to document her hours and contend with unfamiliar new rules. And for the first time, states will have to absorb some of the costs of SNAP. Again, millions will lose their SNAP benefits at a time when federal cuts to food banks have emptied shelves.

Maybe you don’t give a hoot about poor people and their troubles, but you probably care about hospitals.

An emergency doctor told me, “What most people don’t know is that we have to treat people whether we’re getting paid or not.” He said his own hospital is also contending with tariff-induced price hikes on supplies and equipment.

As the number of uninsured people increases and expenses of uncompensated care rise, hospitals will see red ink. Medicaid is typically their largest source of revenue, followed closely by Medicare, which will also be hammered by the big beautiful bill.

Hospitals will try to compensate by raising rates for those with insurance and curtailing more services. It won’t be enough. They will look to the state, which has already tried to help struggling rural hospitals.

But Medicaid is the largest single source of federal funding for states and the second largest expenditure behind education. Replacing that revenue could mean raising taxes. Meanwhile many rural hospitals, already on the edge, will close.

The big beautiful bill is a complex piece of legislation, and Medicaid and SNAP are just two of many pieces. This is the House version, and the bill will change in the Senate. However, Medicaid will still be a target because it’s a big expenditure, and budget architects must come up with enough savings to pay for their tax cuts.

Sherry Robinson is a longtime New Mexico reporter and editor. She has worked in Grants, Gallup, the Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico Business Weekly and Albuquerque Tribune. She is the author of four books. Her columns won first place in 2024 from New Mexico Press Women.

Cal Thomas

While contemplating the horror of two young and soon to be engaged Israeli Embassy employees who were gunned down by a man shouting “free Palestine” and “I did it for Gaza,” outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., last week, I recalled the opening line to a song from the old off-Broadway musical “The Fantasticks” – “You wonder how these things begin.” That song speaks to the love between a boy and a girl. Applied to the Washington shootings it makes you wonder how hate begins.

Theologically it goes back to the Garden of Eden, but in modern times it begins at certain universities and bigoted social media sites.

The hatred of Jews is not new. It extends back several millennia. That so many universities tolerate and some professors promote Jewish hatred is not free speech. It is incitement which, taken at the extreme as it was last week, leads to murder. The people responsible for this cannot wash their hands of the blood of those innocents, any more than Pontius Pilate could exonerate himself from Christ’s crucifixion by Roman soldiers by symbolically washing his hands and claiming, “I am innocent of this man’s blood.”

I have raised this question before, but it is worth repeating. Why do the media never ask who is underwriting these demonstrations, including paying for tents, printed signs and any travel, accommodations and food for those who come from out of town? How many of the demonstrators are not students? Chants of “from the river to the sea,” especially when the few who are interviewed can’t identify the river or the sea is code for destroying Israel and justifying the killing of Jews. Consider the reluctance of some who refused – or slowly waited to comment on last week’s shootings, including some Democrats in Congress.

Until President Trump began depriving Harvard and other elite schools of federal grants, these institutions were getting away with effectively being accessories to murder. Would these university presidents, who have done little or nothing to curtail the hateful demonstrations, have tolerated KKK rallies on their campuses? Not likely. Some alumni have stopped giving to their alma maters. More should. Parents should pull their kids out of these pricey schools or not send them there. It is amazing that some parents are shocked to see their children adopt ideas that contradict their fundamental values. What did they expect?

Some historians date the start of persecution, violence, attempts at genocide and deportations of Jews to the Neo-Babylonian Empire (605 BC). There are ongoing debates and discussions why this small group of people have been singled out over the centuries as the cause of everything bad, especially when they have contributed so much to the world that is objectively good.

The Jewish lyricist Oscar Hammerstein may have gotten to the heart of it when he wrote “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” for the musical “South Pacific.” Here is part of the lyric, which readers should Google and read in its entirety:

“You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,

You’ve got to be taught from year to year,

It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear–

You’ve got to be carefully taught!”

The alleged killer of those two embassy employees (if convicted, he should get the federal death penalty), the terrorist murders of Jews in Israel by Hamas and Iran’s Houthi proxies, the vilification of Jews by professors at certain universities, are instructing a new generation to hate. The universities that tolerate hate should be punished more than just depriving their schools of grants. The professors who poison young minds should be fired, hate groups banished from campuses and the country, and the demonstrators held accountable.

Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).