Contact: Erika Martinez
(505)986-4263
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 12, 2014
Senate Public Affairs Committee Votes Unanimously on Substitute Bill for Hospital Solvency
Santa Fe, NM – Today, the Senate Public Affairs Committee, in a straight party line vote, passed a substitute bill for Senate Bills 314, 368 and 268, designed to allow counties to come up with funding solutions to cover Medicaid and Medicare cuts to hospitals statewide.
The compromise provides for counties to impose an excise tax of one-twelfth percent of gross receipts. A representative from the New Mexico Association of Counties said counties were in agreement with the proposal. A hospital advocate who attended the meeting said the one-twelfth percent would still not be enough to fund the program.
An additional amendment requires that no action for collection of claims shall be allowed against any patient deemed indigent.
“It must be a perfect compromise because no one’s completely happy,” said Committee Chair Jerry Ortiz y Pino (D-12-Bernalillo). “There is still a bit of a gap of about $10 million that we’re hoping the state will cover.”
Earlier in the week, certain committee members stated that a compromise needed to be reached that would allow quality rural healthcare to be provided without passing the cost onto county taxpayers.
According to an article in the Albuquerque Journal, the Human Services Department (HSD) and the New Mexico Hospital Association proposed that rural hospitals outside of Bernalillo County receive $36 million from a one-eighth percent gross receipts tax through imposition of local tax at the county level. Funding packages that hospitals proposed included the $36 million from gross receipts tax, about $10 million in state funds, and federal funds subject to state and county funding. This plan would have generated approximately $192 million statewide.
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