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FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004

 

 NATIONAL REPORT EXAMINES NEW MEXICO’S

STATE-PROVIDED HEALTH CARE

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 30, 2004) –  An assessment of health care in the 50 states, released here today, reports that New Mexico was one of only a half dozen states that spends more of its long-term care dollars on home and community services than on institutional care.

“New Mexico is ahead of many others in providing services to the elderly and disabled at home,” said Katherine Barrett, co-author of the report. The article appears in the February 2004 issue of Governing magazine

Governing’s analysis of state-funded health care is part of the Government Performance Project, a six-year-old effort, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, to evaluate a wide range of state government management and policy functions. This year’s special report focuses on six critical health care problems facing states: long-term care, public health, mental health, prescription drugs, access to care for the uninsured, and care for children.

 

Among the report’s other findings about New Mexico:

 

  • New Mexico was the only state that had a statistically significant decrease in the numbers of uninsured in 2001-2002. In 18 states the rates increased; the rest were stable.
  • Despite the recent improvement, New Mexico still has a lot of work to do on insuring its population. It ranks 49th in the country, with only Texas having a higher percentage of uninsured non-elderly adults. The big problem is that fewer employers provide health coverage to their employees here than in any other state – only 55 percent. New Mexico ranks 47th for insuring children.
  • Although the state is also close to the bottom in its vaccination coverage, it has a respectable middle-of-the-pack ranking for preventing pre-term births, low-birth weight and infant mortality. The state has shown commitment to children’s health in a Medicaid program that offers coverage at 235 percent of poverty – well beyond the coverage offered by many other states.

 

The Government Performance Project found and documented the inability of the 50 states’ healthcare system to deliver improvements in medicine fairly and consistently to many of their citizens. Health care in most states is not just inadequate, the study concluded  -- it’s deteriorating. “After exhaustive analysis and hundreds of interviews,” says Peter Harkness, Governing’s publisher and editor, “it became clear that there is a health care crisis in America. But it is in no way a medical crisis.  It is a fiscal crisis.” 

 

Governing is a policy and management magazine aimed at high-level state and local government officials. An online version of this report will be available at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/intro.htm as of January 29.  Press releases for each of the 50 states can be found at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/press.htm.

 

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