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Wednesday, October 08, 2025The Health Decade: Sweeping Events Continue To Impact Healthcare In State; MLG Presides Over A Progressive Era That Impacts, Vaccines, Abortion And More This has become the decade of health in state politics. It started with Covid and vaccines, then on to the repeal of Roe V. Wade, the Medicaid cuts and to today where the federal government is shut down because of an intense argument over health insurance subsidies. Presiding over this has been MLG, a former Health Department secretary, who vigorously attacked the Covid epidemic--critics say too vigorously---and later paved the way for one of the most liberal abortion laws in the nation in response to the court ruling overturning abortion rights. Last month her Health Department ensured that New Mexicans did not get caught up in the confusion over Covid and other vaccines and issued precise guidelines for vaccinations. Then there's the recently concluded special legislative session where measures to protect rural health care and provide health insurance subsidies were approved. (The doctor shortage will have to wait until the regular session in January.) The changes here have been far reaching and the New Yorker takes notice with this update : How New Mexico Became a Sanctuary State for Health Care. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, the number of abortion clinics there has doubled. With strong protections for gender-affirming treatment, and now universal child care, the state is betting on a progressive vision. In recent years, New Mexico has quietly emerged as a progressive health-care sanctuary. Since the Dobbs decision, the number of abortion clinics has more than doubled, as clinics that were forced to close their doors elsewhere have reopened in the state, which has no gestational limits on abortion. More than ten thousand women have travelled there to receive abortion care. "New Mexico is “taking on the burden for women who don’t have these protections in places like Texas and Oklahoma and Nevada and Utah,” Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said. The state also has among the strongest protections in the Southwest for gender-affirming care for both adults and minors. When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance limiting the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine to certain populations, New Mexico’s Department of Health promptly ordered pharmacies to make the vaccine available to anyone who wanted it. This November, New Mexico will become the first state to offer universal free child care to all residents, regardless of income—an initiative that Lujan Grisham has spoken about as being part of a broader attempt to improve the health of New Mexicans. How the Governor's aggressive health care agenda will be judged in the future is unknown but it will be an enduring legacy of her two terms. NM ABORTION LAW  With over 10,000 women traveling here for abortions, we looked at the cost:
Many groups in Texas--where abortion is severely restricted--help women finance their trips and medical expenses here. THE DEBATE
Kudos to you for your comprehensive and politically correct post taking KOAT to the proverbial woodshed for their "attempt" to exclude Mayling Armijo and Eddie Varela from the outlet's debate stage. I say "attempt" because I'll bet my benji to your hole in a donut that your point-by-point outing of their wrongheadedness will now be corrected by the station. Thanks for getting in the trenches for those that some would marginalize. One solution is simple: expand the debate to 90 minutes giving plenty of time for all the candidates. But will the penny-pinchers at Hearst--which owns the station--give up that extra half hour of ad revenue? This is the Home of New Mexico Politics. |
 
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