No News Is Good News If the Alternative Is Armed Insurrection

This week’s news included our first human bird-flu death and no violent effort to overthrow the government.

Outgoing VP Kamala Harris quietly presided over certification of Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. Presidency. That’s always a yawner. But, four years ago, a losing Presidential candidate orchestrated a plot to stay in office through fraud and chicanery, aided by a violent protest that killed five police officers and threatened the lives of congessfolk trying to do their constitutional job, including that losing candidate’s vice-president. Imagine trying to explain that to Dwight David Eisenhower! Then explaining that the guy was elected again.

He’ll reportedly pardon folks convicted of crimes in the failed coup effort. You elect a somewhat demented narcissist, then even violence against our country is acceptable if committed with admiration for the narcissist. An event almost unimaginable in U.S. history occurred, on national TV. The shifting sands of memory have already covered it.

This year, no violence. No threat of violence.

I can’t tell if the first human death from bird flu will someday loom large in memory, or be a trivia answer. (I’d bet on the latter, but for months I’ve washed my hands after filling bird-feeders.)

In 2016, the new president economized by abandoning the small office in charge of monitoring the world for possible pandemics, such as ebola and swine flu, and responding quickly. In 2019-20, that president denied that COVID-19 was any big deal. Perhaps coincidentally, the U.S., 4.24% of the world’s population, suffered by May 2020 28.6% of the global deaths from the pandemic, 103,700 out of 362,705. Maybe reporting anomalies contributed; and maybe some of the initial sanitizing recommendations proved excessive. But Mr. Trump was pooh-poohing masks, and advising folks to try weird remedies, and now wants to appoint an anti-vax nutcase to oversee such matters. Trump’s term ended in January, 2021. By April 2024, the death figures were just over seven million worldwide and 1,219,487 [a reasonable 5.7%] here.

The Salk vaccine stemmed the polio epidemic of seventy years ago. Polio has vanished. Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s lawyer has brought lawsuits seeking to undo approval, and even do a new placebo test – not vaccinating some kids, to see what happens. Sorry, but given 70 years’ scientific history, that just sounds dangerously goofy. Kennedy also helped undermine Samoan confidence in the measles vaccine, helping Samoa suffer a deadly measles outbreak.

In 2020, Kennedy said that much of the pandemic “feels very planned to me,” adding that “if you create these mechanisms for control, they become weapons of obedience for authoritarian regimes.” Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s choice to heat the National Institute of Health, said in April 2020 that the pandemic would be less deadly than flu. FDA appointee Marty Makary said in February 2021 that COVID would be “mostly gone by April.” Their ideologies dominated their “scientific” pronouncements. Not ideal behavior by the folks who’ll decide how we handle the next big health problem. Or biological warfare against us.

Meanwhile Mr. Trump, like an Alzheimer's patient, grabs at everything he sees. His threat to snatch the Panama Canal and Greenland, for our security, undermines alliances. Refusing to rule out violence tells Xi and Putin that if they feel they need Taiwan or Ukraine, that’s cool. Even Trump’s own former National Security Advisor says that’s dumber than a fencepost.

Very few of my future Sunday columns will mention the White House. It’s too easy a target.

                                         – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 12 January, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on the KRWG website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[In 2025, very few of my Sunday columns will discuss Mr. Trump. We have plenty of urgent issues locally worth discussing; and Washington is both too easy a target to be much fun [see above column] and a little fruitless, because folks mostly believe what they believe and ain’t listening.

However, a Facebook exchange today set me thinking on what’s maybe an odd course: Along with keeping an eye on Mr. Trump, and resisting excesses if and as we can, we should be grateful we are not him. Most of us, clearly including Joe Biden, grew up in families that taught us some basic stuff about loving and being loved, living our lives but considering others’ needs too, and basic decency. Mr. Trump was taught that it was a dog-eat-dog world, and one’s task was to make as much money as you could off anyone else you met, and you got laughed at if you didn’t. All his annoying traits, some trivial, such as cheating at golf and comically exaggerating crowd sizes, and humiliating anyone who disagrees with him, are indeed annoying; but each speaks eloquently of his need to do that sort of shit, and I can think of few people I know who would choose to be in Donald’s wounded mind if they could avoid it. It must be hell!

So, while maintaining compassion for all those he hurts and insults, save some for him. ]

New Mexico Supreme Court Confirms Localities Can't Outlaw Abortions

No big surprise here, but on 9January, as I watched all that wonderful snow float earthward, the New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously rendered a decision that’s important but also as obvious as the snow falling in the direction Newton would anticipate: that the vicious efforts by Hobbs, Clovis, Lea County, and Roosevelt County to outlaw abortions was illegal and ineffective. Despite a laundry list of goofy sounding rightwing “friends of the court,” the justices said that the ordinance, as it was intended to, conflicts with state law, and that the state statute controls. The court did not consider or decide the deeper question of the ordinance’s constitutionality, because there’s a basic procedure rule that if you don’t have to decide a constitutional question, because some other issue is sufficient to decide the case, you don’t look at or opine on the constitutional question.

The case was formally known as State ex rel. Torrez v Board of County Commissioners for Lea County, et al., Docket # S-1-SC-39742 (1/9/2025)

The ordinances, in the court’s words, “create blanket prohibitions on the mailing or receipt of any abortion-related instrumentality.” Those prohibitions, the court concluded, “plainly conflict with provisions of the Reproductive and Gender-Affirming Health Care Freedom Act (the Health Care Freedom Act or the Act), NMSA 1978, §§ 24-34-1 to -5 (2023)” and several other statutes.

Therefore the effort failed.

The court reviewed the history, starting with the 2022 US. Supreme Court decision in Hobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215, 360-61 (2022), overturning Roe v. Wade, 410 US. 113 (1973), and declaring the authority to regulate abortions a state issue. Today’s opinion noted the accuracy of the Hobbs dissenting justices’ prediction that Hobbs would encourage just such in-state battles as this one.

In response to Hobbs, New Mexico’s Legislature revisited the decades-old state criminal statute banning abortions unless deemed necessary to protect a woman from death or “serious and permanent bodily injury. In 2021 the Legislature repealed the old ban and its criminal penalties, removing legal bars to abortion in New Mexico. Further legislative and executive actions broadened access. Most notably, the the Health Care Freedom Act, stating New Mexico’s modern desire to protect women's’ rights to access reproductive health care in New Mexico, went into effect in June 2023.  It prohibits any public body, entity, or individual from interfering with access to reproductive or gender-affirming health care and imposes penalties for violations of the Act’s provisions. The two county commissions and the two city councils had willfully violated that law.

Thus, today's decision should come as no surprise.

However, it confirms the importance (disputed at the time) of formally rescinding the old law and enacting a fresh one, bringing a more modern and compassionate approach to the issue. 

                                         --  30 -- 

Up your Game, City of Las Cruces!

Dear City of Las Cruces: up your game!

Despite good intentions, you look like the 2-13 New York’s football Giants.

A humongous payout for a cop’s groundless killing of some poor woman? The AG reporting that you violated the Open Meetings Law?

What’s holding back the government of my favorite city? Only it’s own arrogance.

We’ve paid huge sums to the families of folks unjustifiably killed by our police offices. As an alternate municipal judge I met caring officers who seemed more concerned about helping the poor and addled than about bullying them. I’ve watched the heartbreaking video of Officer Jonah Hernandez getting murdered, after approaching the killer courteously.

But, systemically, setting the Guinness world record for small cities paying bereaved families suggests a problem. So might official accusations of secretive law-breaking.

What matters more than these headlines is that each followed folks warning the City, trying to help, and getting stiffed.

Police misbehavior? Citizens busted our butts preparing an ordinance for a citizens’ police oversight board. Sometimes those work well, as even progressive police chiefs realize, and there’s evidence they can reduce crime. Sometimes they don’t. It’s important to organize one correctly, and choose good people. We gave the City a reasoned proposal. Mayor Ken Miyagashima refused a work session for discussion. Surprisingly, four counselors voted to hear us anyway. We made a presentation. The Mayor and Councilor Tessa Abeyta hated the idea, but other councilors showed varying degrees of interest. Those councilors (a majority) sought further talks to refine the idea with city staff. Ken directed it to a semi-secret committee that he and Abeyta controlled. We never heard any invitation to discuss anything.

I can’t say such a committee would have prevented the Gomez killing; but if it improved things at all, that’d be money well spent. The committee’s cost would be a pimple on the nose of any recent payout for police misconduct.

The city experienced a scandal in 2018. The council responded by creating an Inspector-General position and an oversight committee intended to identify, and prevent or expose, misconduct and misuse of funds. The City stalled on the IG, let the Oversight Committee wilt to nothingness, then weakened the committee. That’s not conduct calculated to prevent mistakes.

Transparency? This Open Meetings violation follows violations of the Inspection of Public Records Act. Michael Hays requested documents, got stiffed, and politely warned the City it was breaking the law. A now-departed city attorney blew him off, forcing him to sue, successfully. (Under that attorney’s instructions, City Clerk Christine Rivera, now urging the City to ask legislators to weaken IPRA, broke IPRA.) In February, when the city appeared guilty of an illegal “rolling quorum” regarding the city manager position, the City blew off the Bulletin’s warning that officials were breaking the law. But the City can’t tell Raul Torres to go pound sand.

With the Memorial Medical Center problem, the City seems finally on the right track, but only after newspaper columns, Yoli yammering, and even national coverage. (The AG is looking at that too.)

I think we have some really good people, in Police Chief Jeremy Story, City Manager Ikani Taumoepeau, City Attorney Brad Douglas, and several of our city councilors.

However: citizens are not all idiots. A diversity of views on things usually improves outcomes. Holding a nice position doesn’t mean turn off your brains. You can’t do it alone. Together, we can do a lot better.

                                                         – 30 – 

 

[This column appeared Sunday, 29 December, 2024, on the Las Cruces Sun-News website and will presently be up on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]

[Sorry for not posting it Sunday, as usual! And Happy New Year!]

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas!

Christmas is not a bad time to consider what really matters.

It almost certainly wasn’t Jesus’s actual birthday. It closely follows Winter Solstice. Romans had held festivals December 17-23 to honor the agriculture god, feasting and exchanging presents; and on December 25^th they celebrated the sun god’s birth. So why not Jesus’s “birthday.” (The Bible doesn’t say. A slender textual clue suggests that Gabriel visited the Virgin Mary to give her the good news in December, which would put His birth in or around September.) The first official Roman Church mention of December 25 comes nearly 350 years later.

Still, Christmas, with our focus on family feasting and gift-giving and reunions, brings us together in a mostly peaceful and reflective way. That’s so for most of us, not just Christians.

Jesus reportedly said and lived some things worth hearing and emulating.

He told us to treat the poor and downtrodden as we would Him. He urged us to welcome strangers. His whole life and preaching emphasized considering others’ needs before one’s own interest, being generous, avoiding greed and manipulation of others for profit. Fitting a camel, which is a bit bulky, through a needle’s eye is how he estimated the prospect for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates going to Heaven. Like Buddha’s disciples, Jesus’s disposed of their worldly wealth and followed him, living a simpler and harsher life than most folks. He also told us not to judge others, since none of us is without serious faults. And that when someone slaps you, offer him a second shot.

Whatever your religion, code, or philosophy, if several of those principles aren’t central, consider them -- not ‘cause Jesus said so, or to secure a condo in the clouds, but because a substantial body of experience-based opinion says they are the route to a better life here on earth. (How they work later on is beyond my pay grade.)

All that is pretty familiar.

I’d add some.

Be grateful. (To Whom or what, or just grateful, is up to you.) Gratitude is both an appropriate and a healthy attitude toward life. You are incredibly privileged to live at all, to live a human life, to live a relatively free and healthy life. We take all that for granted; but recalling it helps us keep in mind our privilege, or good luck, and the short nature of our lives, and savor life.

There’s medical evidence that gratitude can help improve and even slightly extend our lives. The same is true of laughter. And of contemplation.

Jesus didn’t say, “Meditate as often as you can, and write in your journal,” but solitary contemplation marked the earliest really committed followers of Jesus and Buddha. Thoughtful atheists also recommend it. Most of us fear it. We fear emptying our our time and minds to contemplate, because there’s so much we really don’t care to face. That there is a hell of a good reason to get quiet, walking or sitting or writing, and shake hands with your demons.

Particularly stuck in our cacophonous culture of Internet chaos and vitriolic partisanship, battered by corporate and political lies, it’s tough to hear one’s own inner voice. But that’s the one that could help us find some inner peace.

I don’t suggest ceasing to fight for a better world. This highly imperfect world is the only one we got. Let’s enjoy trying to help it

                                                     – 30 – 

[This 22 December, 2024 Sunday column will presently be up on the Las Cruces Sun-News website and also on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]

[Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Xin Nian Kwai Le! Have a warm fire and a warm famly! And Best Wishes in whatever language, religion, or culture, or philosophy suits you. ]

[I was never highly religious. My father was an atheist with Jewish heritage, and my mother an Episcopalian. But we did all love Christmas. It helped that we always lived where photographs of our Christmasses, if I could show ‘em to you, could be Christmas cards, with a tall, well-decorated tree and a lively fire in the fireplace, and usually snow on the ground. I spent most of my first dozen Christmasses in a small cottage in a forest, on a slender, curving road called Memory Lane, without even a house number until I was 6 or 10. Then we moved to an older and larger house, with a larger living room and fireplace, an old-fashioned country home people admired when they saw it. Both places had extra tall ceilings in the living room. And my mother, from northern Maine, knew how to keep Christmas, decorating the tree especially well and leading kids in singing carols. Fortunately, our parents loved us, and had enough love in them to love my sister and me, too. We had our battles, as I grew older, but loved each other as long as they lived. I never forget how fortunate I was. ]

 

Thoughts on Truly Decreasing Crime

[sorry i forgot to post this yesterday!]

Everyone’s shouting about crime, but few are quietly offering cogent suggestions.

One critical problem for police, judges, and the public is that someone commits a crime, gets arrested, but must be released because of mental incompetency.

Federal and state constitutions guarantee folks accused of crimes a fair trial with a lawyer; but if defendant can’t understand the proceedings or help that lawyer, no fair trial is possible. As a sometime municipal judge, I had to let people go, unless they were extremely dangerous. I couldn’t try ‘em. Or incarcerate them or force treatment on them.

These are not issues our local governments can fix.

These are difficult problems. As LCPD Chief Jeremy Story said Wednesday, “Competency is a huge issue. It’s a complex problem.” He mentioned a woman with hundreds of cases – petty misdemeanors such as breaking windows, trespassing, shoplifting – whom he can do nothing about.

We can do better. “You’re incompetent, so skate free!” is no longer a sane option, for defendants or for the community. The state has been trying some promising new ways of getting defendant/addict in a room with therapist early on, using forensic navigators, but those programs are limited.

Other states and the feds authorize competency restoration. The court orders defendant to participate in a program to restore sufficient mental competency to understand the legal proceedings and participate in their defense. This may occur on an in-patient or out-patient basis, or even in jail. It may involve education, mental health treatment, or other efforts, including managing the defendant’s disruptive behaviors or other problems that impede the restoration process. Courts provide a reasonable period of time, such as 6-12 months.

What’s critical is resources: personnel, solid training of that personnel, beds in facilities, etc. Which our flush state can afford, but has been doing poorly on for a while. Governor Martinez destroyed our mental health treatment system, and there are gaping holes in the performance of current state leaders.

Programs in Minnesota, California, and Texas – e.g., both progressive and not – offer models worth looking at.

We might also make better use of our involuntary commitment statute, which authorizes “An interested person who reasonably believes that an adult is suffering from a mental disorder and presents a likelihood of serious harm to the adult's own self or others,” to request the D.A. to investigate whether a thirty-day period of evaluation and treatment is warranted. The D.A. must act within 72 hours. He may petition the the court for a hearing. The court issues a summons. “If the proposed client is summoned and fails to appear . . . or appears without having been evaluated, the court may order the proposed client to be detained for evaluation.”

Presumably. “an interested person” could be a friend or relative, a shopkeeper, or anyone with a reason to care about that the proposed patient might do to himself or others. Some say involuntary treatment never works. That’s reasonable, but never say never. Experience shows that sometimes, though the person in need of treatment couldn’t or wouldn’t have asked, an enforced period of contact with caring professionals, free of normal environmental and peer pressures, can trigger an interest in getting clean and well. And the person will be off the street and living a healthier life for a spell.

We must improve our competency law; authorize competency-restoration; invest heavily in personnel and training, statewide; and ensure that all these laws work together.

                                                 – 30 –

 

[This column appeared Sunday, 15 December, 2024, and will presently be up on the Las Cruces Sun-News website and also on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]

Whether or not it's Genocide, We Should Oppose What Israel is Doing in Gaza

We must not let our passions about international bad conduct lead to mistreatment of individuals here in the U.S. whatever their countries or religions do elsewhere.

Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?

Genocide means acts committed with the intent to destroy, wholly or partially, a national, ethnic, or religious group, by killing or seriously harming members of the group or inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the group's destruction. It’s an international crime. South Africa’s formal charges mean the International Court of Justice may some day decide the genocide issue.

Hebrew University’s ProfessorAmos Goldberg, a top expert, says, “Yes, it is genocide. It is so difficult and painful to admit it, but . . .after six months of brutal war we can no longer avoid this conclusion.”

“Intent” is a key issue. Israeli officials say and do some things that evidence an intent to destroy. In U.S. law, if you intentionally act in a way that is likely to kill someone, that’s ample intent. Destroying homes, schools, hospitals, and water supplies sure sounds like creating “conditions calculated to bring about the group’s destruction.” Legally, Israel’s killing of 50,000 civilians, many women and children, is intentional.

Israel argues “self-defense.” Certainly on October 7^th Hamas massacred innocent civilians who’d done nothing to deserve being beaten, raped, kidnaped, and/or massacred.

But if a dozen KKK members terrorists bombed an NAACP meeting, no one would argue that authorities could destroy the culprits’ hometown, or state, and everyone in it.

Professor Goldberg argues that “the level and pace of indiscriminate killing, destruction, mass expulsions, displacement, famine, executions, the wiping out of cultural and religious institutions, the crushing of elites (including the killing of journalists), and the sweeping dehumanization of the Palestinians — create an overall picture of genocide, of a deliberate conscious crushing of Palestinian existence in Gaza.”

Nor does perceived danger excuse genocide. Groups in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Burma have arguably committed genocide because of what Goldberg calls, “an authentic sense of self-defence.” Genocide doesn’t require the insanity and complete lack of provocation that characterized Nazi Germany’s conduct.

“Genocide” or not, killing or maiming 100,000 civilians is not conduct that the U.S. should support.

Legally, the argument might differ in a declared war between nations. Dresden, Hiroshima, and German bombing of London were ugly acts of war. However, that excuse didn’t apply to German treatment of Jews and others. Nor does it here. The whole pattern of Israeli abuses of Palestinians, including extensive violence by Israelis against West Bank residents that has amounted to usurpation of that area and rendering its population homeless, is further evidence of an intent to destroy.]

Each side can accurately claim extensive and unjustified violence perpetrated against it.

In Israel’s defense, Britain set a forest fire and walked away. By promising Arabia to eveyone during World War I and continuing its conduct during World War II, Britain (largely) created a situation where deserving folks had honest but inconsistent claims to territory, with hostilities magnified by their differing religions.

The rest of the world should likely have helped maintain peace during the last century, and perhaps should act to restore peace now; but that won’t happen. We can only hope that the better instincts of both Israelis and Palestinians, and weariness of mutual mass destruction, somehow come to the fore.

Some truths are incredibly sad. But opposing genocide – or whatever softer term you choose – ain’t anti-Semitic.

                                                                  – 30 –

 

[This column appeared Sunday, 8 December, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News

and on the newspaper's website, and will presently be posted also on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]

[This is a hard column to write, for many reasons. I have close friends who are Israeli; and they are torn by all this, suffering a mix of fear and concern, loathing for Mr. Netanyahu. (Said one friend, “Netanyahu cares only about his own interest.” ) I think they’re mortified at the mounting death toll, but wholly uncertain not only what they personally could do about this but, perhaps how Israel, even with its ideal leader, could at this point make this situation anywhere near right. I’m hearing concern for the dead, as well as fears that Israel’s conduct will ultimately endanger the country, rather than saving it.]

[I sure can’t imagine how this gets made right! I have no wisdom to offer.]

[Whether or not this is the international crime of “genocide” isn’t the main issue. However, it seems worth noting that while this may be genocide, it feels like something different and less purely evil [more justified, if such could ever be justified] than the Holocaust. The Holocaust destroyed people of a whole ethnic group for no cogent reason, with absolutely no provocation. The Middle East is different. I blame Britain, for promising Arabia to everyone for most of the 20^th Century, then putting Israel and Palestine in a box they each believed they owned, and watching the inevitable violence from afar. It’s like the difference between murders: Richard Speck’s massacre of 8 student nurses in Chicago, versus a wife’s murder of her abusive husband is loading the deck unfairly, but Speck versus a man’s murder of his wife’s lover, or rapist? Still murder, but.]

[Whether Israel should have been created, whether it should have been created where it was created, are questions beyond my pay grade. However, Israel is there, and has been; and Palestine has too. Each has the right to exist. I desperately wish we could entice them to peace; but each has brutalized the other too extensively to make that emotionally appetizing to either. It’s also tragic that each side is currently being led by folks who don’t have the common interest as their top priority. Neither Netanyahu nor Hamas is improving the lot of their respective constituencies.]

[The column's first sentence deserves emphasis.  We should not be harassing or hating Jewish or Muslim students for what Israel and Hamas do, nor should  we mistreat in any way folks from Russia, India, or any other country for the nation's sins.  That's just plain good sense and fairness: this is the United States, where all ought to be welcome; individuals have little control over their governments, and individuals in dictatorships have even less.  I urge everyone who feels strongly about international events to keep this in mind.  Maybe I feel strongly about it because I traveled internationally and experienced courtesy and warmth from people who loathed some of our country's worst behavior.  It's also true that both Jews and Palestinians have been poorly treated by the world's "great powers." ] 

A Day at the Beach - 1940

This photo moves me greatly.  It shows two sisters.  The younger, lying on the sand, is highly imaginative, but even her creative mind likely cannot imagine that soon she will suffer so horribly and needlessly that everyone reading this knows her name, has heard of her writing, perhaps has even seen the play named for her, of which Las Cruces had an excellent production just a few months ago. 

The link to that play didn't seem to work when I posted this on Facebook: https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/2024/10/remembering-anne-frank-in-challenging.html

Positive Steps by Memorial Medical Center

Memorial Medical Center appears to be upping its game.

Wednesday MMC held a public board meeting that was mostly comments and criticism from the public. Several folks started with a litany of bad experiences and criticism; Earl Nissen asked about the poor folks with cancer MMC turned away; but MMC gave good answers to many questions (though not Earl’s). When I suggested they hire an ombudsperson, they produced on the spot someone they’d already hired.

I still view with skepticism and concern Apollo Global, the private equity firm that owns Lifepoint, which owns and operates MMC. There’s significant tension between maximizing profits and maximizing patients’ care. Private equity firms sometimes wring hospitals dry. They’re under investigation, and bear watching – by feds, states, cities, and journalists. They’re part of a U.S. health care system that keeps our costs high and our care minimal. Elsewhere, health care is too essential not to be public. Only in the U.S. do medical bills cause 530,000 bankruptcies annually. That’s two-thirds of all U.S. bankruptcies.

Most providers at Memorial are competent and caring. We’ve had consistently good experiences, although some friends haven’t. Two surgeons operated on me this year, Dr. McGuire at Mountainview and Dr. Pinheiro at MMC. Both doctors came highly recommended, impressed me, and did great jobs.

MMC has an unusal situation. Because its predecessor, Memorial General, was a Hill-Burton public hospital, jointly owned by City and County, which still own the land, MMC’s lease and the purchase contract obligate MMC to keep operating certain departments open and fulfill other promises, including reporting requirements. MMC appeared in breach, notably of obligations to treat indigent patients with serious conditions such as cancer.

A public outcry and a national news story helped awaken the City to its oversight responsibilities. The City investigated. The City wrote MMC demanding compliance. The County joined in the demand.

The good news is that MMC is providing requisite information, if perhaps a little more slowly than the City might like, and negotiating issues. Sources at both City and MMC seem optimistic that the negotiations will lead to improvements, without costly litigation. Trusting no one completely, I’ll be interested to see what actually develops.

It’s good news that MMC has switched CEO’s: John Harris, by all accounts, was dictatorial, played favorites, retaliated against folks who pushed for better medical care and raised issues. So the apparent good news comes after a lot of good people got punished and left, or got fired. The AG and others are still investigating possible medicare fraud and other alleged problems.

Dennis Knox, the new CEO, appears a breath of fresh air. He is more responsive to questions and concerns. He speaks of increased transparency. The other guy clammed up and wouldn’t even answer my calls when I investigated MMC for columns. He held Wednesday’s public board-meeting; MMC says it’ll do that once a year, henceforth. (I’d respectfully suggest every six months.) Yeah, the meeting was MMC trying to put on its best face; but no reasonable observer could fail to conclude that that Board includes at least a majority who seriously care about patients and community.

MMC has a lot of caring, competent providers, but it took those news stories, Yoli Diaz’s complaints, and the official investigations to prod Lifepoint into upping MMC’s game. The ultimate owner remains Apollo Global, which has given us reason to stay alert. Thanks, Yoli, Raul, Gretchen Morgenson, and local officials.

                                       – 30 --

 

[This column appeared Sunday, 24 November, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News

and will presently appear on the newspaper’s website and on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]

[As I say in the column, let’s credit MMC for losing former CEO John Harris and hiring someone who seems a better bet; and for responding reasonably to the City’s notice of breach; and for Wednesday evening’s public board-meeting. These are positive moves. I’m not delighted that MMC is ultimately owned by a private equity firm, Global Assets. However, if MMC is prepared to bring itself into compliance with its contractual obligations, the City [and County] will remain in a kind of partnership.

I did think Wednesday evening’s session showed both why some people are unhappy with MMC’s work and that there are many caring medical professionals on MMC’s board. (I never doubted that most line people we see at MMC are qualified and caring; I’ve doubted whether management does right by them, or by us.) Recent history at MMC, including some reprisals and firings discussed in my columns, and the temporary closure of the mental health ward, are cause for concern, and cost us some very fine medical professionals. But let’s hope that, going forward, Lifepoint/Apollo manage MMC in a way that reflects a healthier balance between profits and topnotch are. I’m guardedly optimistic about that.]