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Yahoo
09-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Medical malpractice bill yet to be heard in Senate committee. Major campaign donors connected to issue
Mar. 9—Five Democrats on the committee where a medical malpractice bill is waiting to be heard received some of their largest campaign contributions from the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association. There are six bills related to medical malpractice filed in the Legislature, but only one appears to have a slim path to passage: Senate Bill 176, which would curb medical malpractice liability without limiting caps in an effort to make the state more appealing to doctors. The bill has amassed 23 cosponsors, but seems unlikely to pass this session, as it's been assigned to three committees, none have heard it yet, and the session is due to end in just two weeks. The Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee teased scheduling the bill over the last week, but has not yet done so. Supporters of Senate Bill 176 argue that New Mexico's medical malpractice laws have made the state a magnet for out-of-state attorneys and discourage doctors from practicing in New Mexico, contributing to the state's provider shortage. Critics, like the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, say the bill will make it more difficult for injured patients to sue health care providers. In 2022, New Mexico had the highest medical malpractice insurance loss ratio in the country, according to a recent Think New Mexico report, meaning insurers paid out 183% of the premiums they took in. New Mexico was one of seven states where insurers lost money, making it more expensive for them to function in the market. The New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association's PAC, the Committee on Individual Responsibility, spent $556,354 in the 2024 election cycle, according to the New Mexico Secretary of State database. Its largest donations were $52,000 to the Brian Egolf Speaker Fund, a political action committee that works to grow the Democratic majority in the state House, and $52,000 to the New Mexico Senate Democrats. SB176's lead sponsor did get thousands in campaign donations from health care organizations advocating for providers in 2024 — groups that could benefit from medical malpractice reform. Some medical-field political action committees also spent large sums. The New Mexico Health Care Association is a trade organization for facility-based long-term care providers, and its PAC spent over $125,850 in the 2024 election cycle, according to the Secretary of State database. The New Mexico Hospital Association's PAC spent $84,826 for the election cycle. Lawyer and law firm donations In addition to the trial lawyers' generous donations to Democrats' House and Senate election arms, committee members who will debate the bill, if it ever comes up, were also beneficiaries of large donations from the trial lawyer PAC and individual lawyers. A committee chair decides when a bill can be heard. Democratic Committee Chair Sen. Linda Lopez's highest 2024 campaign donor was the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, with $10,500, according to the Secretary of State's database. She also received over $10,500 in donations from lawyers and law firms, according to her campaign filings. Committee member Sen. Cindy Nava, D-Bernalillo, was the ninth-highest earner for 2024 New Mexico Legislature general election candidates, raising $164,000. Nava received $7,000 from the Trial Lawyers Association, her third-highest donor, and over $12,000 from lawyers or law firms. Sen. Shannon Pinto, D-Tohatchi, received $6,000 from the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, her top donor for the 2024 campaign cycle. Sen. Angel Charley, D.-Acoma, received $6,000 from the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, her second-highest donor in 2024. Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, D-Albuquerque, is a retired attorney and law professor. In 2024, she received $1,000 from the Trial Lawyers Association and $1,000 from Presbyterian Hospital, making the organizations tie, along with Indian Pueblos Marketing Inc., for her second-highest campaign contributor, according to the Secretary of State's database. The only Democrat on the committee who did not get a direct donation from the Trial Lawyers Association is the bill's lead sponsor and the committee vice-chair, Sen. Martin Hickey of Albuquerque. Hickey did receive approximately $3,000 in donations from individual lawyers or law firms, according to his campaign filings. Medical-field donations All the Democrats in the Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee, where the bill is waiting to be heard, had hundreds, and sometimes thousands, in donations from health care organizations, but SB176's lead sponsor, Hickey, had significantly more. Hickey is a retired doctor and got thousands in campaign donations from individual physicians. The largest was $7,000 from an Albuquerque gastroenterologist. His campaign also garnered over $16,000 from health care organizations, including $3,500 from Molina Healthcare, $2,000 from Lovelace Health Systems and $3,000 from a statewide hospital trade association. Hickey was the fifth-highest earner for 2024 state Legislature general election candidates, raising $191,000 for his campaign. Republican committee members For most of the committee's Republican members, their top campaign contributors came from the construction and oil and gas industries. None had donations from the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association. Three of the four had donations from medical organizations comparable to most of the committee's Democrats, but none rivaled the amount of medical-field-related donations that Hickey received. Republican Committee member Sen. Jay Block, R-Rio Rancho, is an SB176 cosponsor. Block had no significant contributions clearly connected to the medical field. He did have a $521 contribution from a personal injury lawyer in Albuquerque. Cathy Cook is a news reporter for the Albuquerque Journal. Reach her via email at ccook@ Journal staff writer Olivier Uyttebrouck contributed to this report.
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Lawmakers eye medical malpractice measure intended to trim attorney fees
Mar. 2—In the final weeks of this year's legislative session, lawmakers confronted with a chronic shortage of health care providers in New Mexico are poised to consider major changes to the state's Medical Malpractice Act. The first hearing on the topic could occur this week. As of Friday, 22 sponsors had signed onto one of the more comprehensive of the six measures before the Legislature, which is intended to make New Mexico more hospitable to doctors by curbing medical malpractice liability without reducing caps on damages. Opponents say it will hurt patients. Supporters of Senate Bill 176 argue that New Mexico's medical malpractice laws have made the state a magnet for out-of-state attorneys and discourage doctors from practicing here. In 2022, New Mexico had the highest medical malpractice insurance loss ratio in the country, according to a recent Think New Mexico report, meaning insurers paid out 183% of the premiums they took in. Indeed, New Mexico was one of only seven states where insurers lost money, making it much more expensive for them to function in the market. The result is insurers pull out of the market, or make it so expensive to get insurance in the state that doctors don't want to practice here: one big reason behind New Mexico's practitioner shortage. For example, New Mexico saw a decline of 30% in the number of primary care physicians from 2,360 in 2017 to 1,649 in 2021. Overall, New Mexico in 2023 had a shortfall of 5,704 registered nurses and clinical nurse specialists; 4,967 emergency medical technicians; in addition to shortfalls of hundreds of physical therapists, pharmacists, psychiatrists, certified nurse practitioners, primary care physicians and occupational therapists. But critics, including the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, say the bill will make it more difficult for injured patients to sue their providers for negligence, and "does nothing to deter bad behavior in the future," said Albuquerque lawyer Kathy Love, a past president of the association. "We all want more doctors in New Mexico and higher quality care," she said. But this bill "is not going to fix the problem." The debate over the effects of medical malpractice litigation on the health care workforce has spanned years, often drawing fierce debate and sizable campaign contributions to lawmakers by health systems, trial lawyers and other groups. Sen. Martin Hickey, D-Albuquerque, one of 22 co-sponsors of SB 176, argues that the risk of malpractice litigation has made New Mexico an unattractive state to practice medicine. "We're known all over the country as the worst place to practice medicine," said Hickey, the only physician in the state Legislature and former chief medical officer for Lovelace Health System. "Physicians are leaving, and finally people up here are acknowledging it," Hickey said of lawmakers. Patients have to wait months to get an appointment with a primary care doctor or a specialist. "You just hear all the time — people can't get in to see a doctor." New Mexico physicians pay more for malpractice insurance than counterparts in other states and rates increase each year, supporters contend. Think New Mexico, a nonprofit think tank that supports SB 176, found that New Mexico had the second-highest rate of medical malpractice claims in the U.S. in 2023, second only to Pennsylvania. An analysis by Think New Mexico, published in a recent report, found that the average annual premium for malpractice insurance is about $43,000 in New Mexico compared with $22,000 in Arizona, $23,700 in Colorado, and $28,500 in Texas. Love says those numbers are misleading because the premium cited for New Mexico also includes costs that stem from hospitals having to help replenish the state's patient compensation fund, which helps qualified providers pay malpractice settlements. The cost of malpractice insurance is expected to drop after the hospitals finish their payments at the end of 2026, she said. Physician groups put the onus on a change to the state Medical Malpractice Act, Senate Bill 75 in 2021, that raised the liability cap on malpractice damages against hospitals, clinics and individual doctors. For hospitals, liability increased from $4 million in 2022 to $5.5 million this year. Next year, the cap will rise to $6 million, with further increases slated in subsequent years. The 2021 law also changed the way funds are paid out from the state-administered patients compensation fund. The law allowed attorneys to seek lump-sum payments from the fund based on lifetime estimates of patient costs. Supporters of SB 176 contend that the lump-sum payments provide an immediate and sizable payout for malpractice attorneys. The bill would return to a pre-2021 practice of paying for medical expenses as they are incurred by patients. "The fund was established to take care of anyone who is injured and any subsequent medical needs due to that injury — to take care of them for life," Hickey said. "And so getting it up front is really a disservice to the patients." Another key provision of SB 176 would cap attorney's fees at 25% of an award for cases settled before trial and 33% of a jury award. Supporters argue that the purpose of malpractice litigation is to compensate an injured patient and help pay ongoing medical expenses. But under current law, attorneys negotiate their fees with clients and typically receive 30% to 40% of malpractice awards and settlements. Las Cruces attorney Grieg Coates, who also practices in Texas, said limiting attorney's fees to 25% effectively means small cases "all of a sudden are not financially viable for an attorney (to accept)." With small medical malpractice cases, he said, plaintiff's attorneys may end up spending more money in costs and fees than what the damages are worth. "So there will be fewer cases being brought by plaintiffs' attorneys (against doctors and hospitals)," Coates said. "Going after attorney's fees effectively decreases the access to justice of those who have less than utterly life-altering, devastating injuries." A third provision on SB 176 would dedicate 75% of punitive damages to a new patient safety improvement fund administered by the state Department of Health. Money from the fund would be appropriated by the Legislature to improve patient safety and health care outcomes. New Mexico is one of the few states that currently has no limits on punitive damages awarded by juries, which can run into tens of millions of dollars. A jury in January awarded nearly $17 million in damages to a woman who carried a 13-inch metal instrument in her abdomen for two months following a 2019 surgery at Presbyterian Hospital. The verdict included $15 million in punitive damages against Presbyterian Healthcare Services, the state's largest health care system.A botched hernia surgery resulted in a $68 million jury award in 2023 against Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital in Gallup, including $50 million in punitive damages. The hospital appealed the verdict in June, and the case was settled in November for an undisclosed amount. Coates said he believes that would be an "unconstitutional taking" by the state of what a jury has concluded should be awarded to an injured plaintiff or their representative. "The unifying theme of all three components of the bill is to ensure that patients are made whole and also improve the health care system," said Fred Nathan, executive director of Think New Mexico. Three other states — Pennsylvania, Alaska and Oregon — use a portion of punitive damages for public purposes and none of those laws have been successfully challenged, Nathan said. "Punitive damages would not be limited, but if they are awarded, they would be largely put into a public fund rather than going to the law firm," he said.
