By Colin Baillio of Health Action New Mexico and Ana Moran of United States of Care
The first week of September, the New Mexico Together for Healthcare team traveled throughout rural New Mexico, including McKinley, Otero, Luna, Hidalgo, Grant, and Sierra counties. We met with community groups, patients, social workers, mental health providers, doctors, community health workers, nurses, local leaders, and others to talk about healthcare issues and how Medicaid Buy-in could help address them.
The people we spoke to talked about how copays and deductibles made it difficult to get the regular care that they needed. Those costs are especially frustrating when families are already paying their monthly premiums while juggling other costs like food, housing, and utilities.
Families and providers described the stress of having an income that fluctuates throughout the year, putting them right on the threshold between Medicaid and private insurance. Providers described people becoming uninsured because they missed the limited enrollment period or were unable to afford monthly premiums.
Immigrant families, who are eager to pay into a health coverage plan, don’t have any options available and are afraid to visit the doctor’s office because they live in fear of deportation. We also heard about the lack of mental health services and the need to address the root causes of provider shortages in rural and frontier communities.
This blog is just the first of several about our trip. We will share who we talked to, what we learned, and how the trip will impact our work over the next few days. Our next blog will be about what we learned in McKinley County.
