Summary
Private equity companies are buying up New Mexico's hospitals and clinics, prioritizing profits over people's health. This trend risks reducing access to care, increasing costs, and imposing restrictive religious policies. This serves out-of-state investors, not New Mexicans, and calls for a community-driven approach to healthcare.
New Mexico has an unfortunate reputation for being a “proving ground” for some of the most harmful “programs” in colonial history. From Spanish colonialism to the Atomic Bomb to ongoing fracking of our public lands. New Mexico seems to have always been a place outsiders believe to be expendable and exploitable.
Enter the newest “program” creeping through our state that needs to be addressed: billionaire backed private healthcare.
In recent years, New Mexico has seen a sharp increase in the concentration of for-profit hospitals.
In fact, we’re ahead of even large states like California, New York, and Texas. We’ve become a proving ground for private equity-backed (PE) healthcare systems. The consequences of this trend are far-reaching, affecting not only the healthcare industry, but also the broader community.
How it works
The privatization of healthcare in New Mexico is a complex issue, involving various stakeholders and interests. It’s a story of consolidation and the pursuit of profit. That profit comes at the expense of low-income families, rural residents, elders, and others struggling to access care. The recent surge in healthcare buyouts has a total value reaching a near-record $115 billion in the US. This has led to a situation where one in every five U.S. patients is treated in a facility owned or controlled by investors.
There’s another part to the private equity backed playbook of for-profit hospitals: shaping the narrative. This comes via establishing foundations and spending time and money with economic development and business leaders. Then comes the defining underlying problems in a profit at all costs kind of way. Finally ending in funding think tanks and policy shops to sell those solutions back to the public. It’s no accident that the same “community foundations” are benefiting from healthcare privatization while also driving the policy conversation about how to fix it.
What this looks like in NM
You may have seen commercials or ads on your social media from “community” healthcare foundations or “think tank” advocacy organizations like Think NM or more recently, Imagine NM. These ads look pretty slick, with local photos and local people talking about “healthcare reform” in New Mexico. And there’s no doubt we need to continue to make healthcare more accessible, higher quality, and affordable. But from what we know about private equity healthcare models is that in the long run they do the opposite of those things.
In New Mexico, this trend is exemplified by the acquisition or “merger” of local hospitals by private equity-backed companies like CHRISTUS Health. The sale of St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe to CHRISTUS in 2023, for instance, has led to the creation of the Anchorum Health Foundation, capitalized entirely by CHRISTUS money. This foundation has since become a significant player in shaping healthcare policy in the state.
The influence of private equity-backed healthcare systems extends beyond the healthcare industry, affecting various aspects of New Mexico’s economy and society. The creation of “community” foundations, such as Anchorum and Con Alma, has provided a vehicle for these companies to shape policy and public discourse. By seeding these foundations with cash sales, private equity-backed companies can exert significant influence over the healthcare landscape.
So who are these organizations, really?
The interconnectedness of various stakeholders and interests is a hallmark of this issue. People like Christina Campos, who serves as a Director at Anchorum is also the founding director of Imagine New Mexico. Similarly, Dr. Alfredo Vigil, who defended hospital consolidation and corporate ownership, has held clinical leadership positions in for-profit hospitals. This shows the complex web of relationships between private equity-backed companies, foundations, and policy organizations
The policy initiatives championed by Think New Mexico, an organization funded by Anchorum and Con Alma, demonstrate the tangible impact of private equity-backed healthcare systems on healthcare policy. Proposals such as capping malpractice payouts, creating a $2 billion public fund, and repealing the gross-receipts tax on medical bills all serve to fatten the margins of private equity-backed healthcare companies.
If you look up Think New Mexico and Imagine New Mexico, their websites are full of pictures showcasing New Mexico landscapes and what appear to be local New Mexicans. But when you dig deeper and realize these organizations are all being backed by for-profit private equity firms. Not to mention oil and gas companies like Peyton Yates. It’s easy to see the clear motivation behind these organizations’ agenda. They want to convince lawmakers that privatizing healthcare is “better” for us, when really it’s just “better” for their investors.
To sum it up, it’s all a scam. Private equity investors from out of state are putting millions of dollars into New Mexico to earn billions. They want policies that make it easier for them to buy up all of our hospitals and clinics. After that they can operate similarly to regulated monopolies and simply raise their rates, cut services, and maximize profits for their out-of-state investors. This has nothing to do with improving healthcare whatsoever.
Additional risks to New Mexicans health
Another layer of concern with the trend toward privatized healthcare is the expanding influence of religious-run health systems. While Anchorum Health Foundation and Con Alma don’t have any obvious indicators of faith-forward agendas, CHRISTUS Health is a Catholic nonprofit network bound by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives, which prohibit abortion, sterilization, contraception, and some LGBTQ+ and end-of-life care.
These aren’t just symbolic values, they have devastating real-world consequences for patients seeking full-spectrum care.
In a state where we have a shield law protecting access to abortion care, it’s unsettling to think that our healthcare system could quietly impose religious doctrine that overrides New Mexicans’ values of respect and choice. When healthcare becomes both privatized and doctrinal, it stops being care. It becomes instead a hidden, self-serving agenda beneath a white coat.
The changing landscape
The consequences of these policies are far-reaching. By shifting control of hospitals and clinics to private companies rather than local owners or public institutions, taxpayers and patients in need of care lose access and oversight. Meanwhile private equity-backed healthcare systems can collect new public dollars, pay lower malpractice claims, and face fewer taxes.
Risks associated with the privatization of healthcare in New Mexico are further compounded by the recent budget vote in Congress. MAGA Republicans have stripped funding from states like New Mexico specifically around medicaid. The future loss of access to federal healthcare funding threatens to exacerbate the existing healthcare disparities in the state. And, these cuts will hit New Mexicans who already struggle the most in other ways as well. Low-income families, young people, elders, and those in rural communities will all suffer more.
We depend on these earned benefits to get the care we need. New Mexico’s healthcare system is already on to the brink. This will leave countless New Mexicans to bear the brunt of a system that puts profits over people, losing access to the essential care they need to live and thrive.
The way forward
There is a different path… we can find a way to expand state resources, especially into rural and underserved communities already hurting for basic healthcare. We must continue to address the underlying issues that affect our communities’ health in bigger and broader avenues. The harmful effects from the oil and gas industry on our air, land and water must be considered. We need to think about clean and drinkable water across the state. And we need to think about the general preparedness for communities to address extreme weather events that threaten our communities. These all have impacts on the larger healthcare systems of New Mexico.
In the end, it’s up to all of us to make sure our healthcare decisions aren’t sold off, restricted, or controlled by profit-driven systems. Our care should belong to our communities and so should the power to protect it.