Federal cuts

On Friday, before hosting a roundtable discussion about the effects of the federal budget bill’s impact on New Mexico’s health care, Senator Martin Heinrich got the story straight from the horse's mouth. The meeting was at First Nations Community Healthsource, where Heinrich talked to patients about what losing Medicaid would mean for them.

At a roundtable discussion hosted by Democratic U. S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (second from right) on Friday, experts, providers and more discussed the potential impacts to Medicaid, which covers 40% of New Mexicans, by what's known as the "Big Beautiful Bill." Heinrich says 96,000 people could lose health coverage and Troy Clark, president of the New Mexico Hospitals Association said six to eight hospitals might be forced to close if federal funds dry up.

For the first time in years, overdose deaths have been declining recently after reaching a peak of about 111,000 in 2022. However, advocates are worried about a backslide on that progress as federal grants are lost, and agencies like the the National Institutes of Health are crippled by drastic funding cuts.

U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM) spoke with Nash Jones on New Mexico in Focus about what these drastic cuts mean for New Mexico.

The New Mexico Department of Justice has released an interactive map showing some of the impacts of federal funding cuts. The map was added to the federal disruptions tracker the NMDOJ launched last month.