OPINION: New Mexico’s health care crisis isn’t about subsidies. It’s about access

New Mexico has a serious health care crisis, and it has nothing to do with whether politicians can temporarily prop up insurance subsidies.

Doctors are leaving our state in record numbers. Clinics are closing. Patients are waiting months to see specialists or driving hours for basic care. In many rural communities, access to health care is shrinking by the year. This isn’t a mystery. It’s the predictable result of policies that make New Mexico one of the most hostile states in the nation to practice medicine.

Yet instead of addressing why doctors are leaving, Democratic lawmakers are declaring victory by backfilling Affordable Care Act subsidies and calling it “fixing health care.”

That’s not fixing health care. That’s avoiding the real problem.

Subsidies don’t create doctors. They don’t staff emergency rooms. They don’t open rural clinics or shorten wait times. You can make an insurance card cheaper, but if there’s no physician willing to practice here, that card is meaningless.

The truth is that New Mexico’s medical malpractice laws are driving providers out of the state. Our liability environment is so extreme that doctors face higher insurance costs and legal exposure than in neighboring states. Many are choosing to leave rather than risk their livelihoods. Democrats know this. They just refuse to confront it because it would require standing up to trial lawyers and special interests.

Instead, they point to costly government programs and claim success. But New Mexicans don’t experience health care through budget line items. They experience it when they can’t get an appointment, when maternity wards close, or when families are told the nearest specialist is hundreds of miles away.

Health care access doesn’t improve because politicians declare victory. It’s about having doctors willing to stay, practice and serve our communities. Until lawmakers are willing to address the policies pushing doctors out of New Mexico, no amount of subsidies will solve our health care crisis.

While those in power avoid the real problem, New Mexicans continue to pay the price.

Jenifer Jones, R-Deming, represents District 32 in the New Mexico House of Representatives.