OPINION: Malpractice debate shows Trump-style fear tactics have come to New Mexico

There was a time in New Mexico when debates over medical malpractice didn’t happen through attack ads or scare tactics. They happened over lunch.

For nearly four decades, we stood on opposite sides of the medical malpractice debate. One of us represented physicians through the New Mexico Medical Society; the other represented trial lawyers through the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association. We advocated for very different constituencies, often with sharply competing priorities. But we shared a commitment to New Mexico’s health care system — and to the idea that public policy should be shaped through expertise, evidence and good-faith negotiation.

And we shared lunch. Regularly. That simple act of sitting together over a meal and having civil discourse seemed common sense to us. We didn’t agree on everything. But we shared something that feels increasingly rare today: respect for one another, an understanding of the political process and a willingness to compromise — and then honor the integrity of our compromise by standing by it.

We met face to face. We talked through hard problems. We negotiated. We searched for solutions that could work for doctors, patients and the legal system alike. Sometimes those conversations produced legislation — such as a carefully negotiated malpractice reform bill that ultimately passed the Legislature, only to be vetoed by then-Gov. Susana Martinez. Even when outcomes weren’t ideal, the process mattered. Policy was driven by facts, not fear.

That era is over.

Today’s medical malpractice debate in New Mexico looks less like a policy discussion and more like something pulled from a national political playbook — one perfected by President Donald Trump — where fear replaces facts and money replaces dialogue. Instead of policy experts meeting across a table, we now see corporate television commercials designed to terrify patients and vilify trial lawyers. Instead of open conversations among stakeholders, we see so-called “think tanks” funded by powerful hospital corporations pushing prepackaged talking points.

Presbyterian Healthcare Services alone has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on prime time TV ads and other public relations efforts. These campaigns aren’t about collaboration or problem-solving. They’re about power — who has it, and how to protect it. And while the rhetoric flies, the real winners sit comfortably on the sidelines: the insurance industry and multibillion-dollar health care corporations. They collect premiums, protect profits and watch New Mexicans argue among themselves.

So who loses?

Independent physicians. Primary care doctors. Specialists. Small outpatient practices. And, ultimately, patients.

New Mexico urgently needs a medical malpractice framework that includes a reformed Patient Compensation Fund (PCF) — restored to its original purpose. The PCF was designed to protect independent physicians: those who run small practices, serve rural communities and provide essential care across the state. It helped stabilize malpractice insurance costs and made it possible for doctors to remain in New Mexico.

That balance was destroyed when former Superintendent of Insurance John Franchini opened the PCF to multibillion-dollar hospital systems. The result was entirely predictable. Massive corporate entities flooded the fund, distorted its risk pool and destabilized its finances.

When the PCF neared bankruptcy, hospital systems didn’t suffer. They had the resources to absorb the impact.

Independent doctors did not.

Many were forced out of practice. Others left the state altogether. Patients lost access to care — especially in rural and underserved communities. Once again, fear-based politics obscured the real issue: corporate consolidation and profit-driven health care policy.

This is exactly how Trump-style politics works. Create an enemy. Stoke fear. Spend heavily on messaging. Distract from who is actually benefiting — and who is paying the price.

New Mexico doesn’t have to accept this.

We know a better way — because we lived it.

It’s time to return to the kind of policymaking that once worked: civil debate, honest conversations and solutions grounded in expertise rather than intimidation. It’s time to bring stakeholders back to the same table — yes, even over a meal — to solve real problems instead of shouting past each other through television ads.

And it’s time to restore the Patient Compensation Fund to what it was always meant to be: a safeguard for independent physicians, not a subsidy for corporate hospital systems and the insurance industry. Beware New Mexicans — when you see a scary ad about doctors leaving New Mexico and making trial lawyers the enemy, ask yourself — who does the ad financially benefit?

Randy Marshall is the former executive director of the New Mexico Medical Society. Peter Mallery is the former executive director of the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association.