Legislature’s health panel picks top three topics for the rest of 2023

The panel in charge of health issues at the New Mexico Legislature set its agenda for the rest of 2023, with an emphasis on child abuse and neglect, substance use disorder, and the health care workforce.

At its first meeting between legislative sessions on Monday, the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee sorted through input from lawmakers and the public about what topics it should consider.

After five hours, committee chair Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino and vice chair Rep. Liz Thomson, both Albuquerque democrats, landed on three priority policy areas they will reserve for two-day meetings scheduled to happen between July, August and September.

There were numerous other health policy topics the lawmakers plan to discuss this year which could come up in the remaining 18 days of meetings scheduled for October, November and December.

In all, the committee is expected to meet for 24 days during the rest of 2023, Ortiz y Pino said.

“That sounds like a lot, but we also have, by my count, requests for 6,719 different topics to consider from the different advocacy groups, from legislators, from constituents, from any and everybody, because this committee’s purview is so broad,” Ortiz y Pino said.

Whatever the committee does, Ortiz y Pino said, their recommendations will have to be signed off on by other parts of the state government.

“We’re not solving these problems ourselves; we’re making a major contribution to a solution,” he said. “I think we can do that, but it would involve some real give and take among ourselves, and willingness to put ourselves out, and to say what we really think, and then be willing to accept one another’s criticisms of it or disagreement with it.”