Firm to to stop delivering babies at Presbyterian Hospital due to medical provider shortage

This story has been corrected to reflect that it is Women’s Specialists of New Mexico that will no longer deliver babies at Presbyterian Hospital. These two news stories hit on the same day.  According to Dr. Jean Valdez (as quoted in the story) of Women’s Specialists:

“We can no longer stretch our physicians to cover two hospitals,” Valdez said. “We have to take both the physical and mental wellbeing of our physicians in mind and can’t stretch them out too far.”

The change will impact more than 200 patients. Valdez said they have nine physicians providing 24-hour OB coverage. They need that to double. But our state’s facing a crippling shortage of doctors and other medical providers.

Valdez cites New Mexico’s medical malpractice laws, tax policy, and Medicaid reimbursement rates as reasons.

In related news, Democrats who control the Legislature and have controlled New Mexico for nearly 100 years outlined their plans to supposedly address the doctor shortage. The Albuquerque Journal article referred to housing subsidies and mandates to keep certain nursing ratios (of course those ratios require the existence of enough nurses).

The Democrats’ entire plan hinges on Rep. Eleanor Chavez’ ridiculous statement “that corporate greed is a driver of the (health care) crisis.” In reality America and New Mexico have a health care crisis driven by numerous factors including: the third party payment system, Medicare, Medicaid, ObamaCare, occupational licensure, medical malpractice law, our poor economy, poor schools, and high crime (not to mention New Mexico’s rural nature). 

Of course, Democrats don’t want to address what the EXPERT says is the issue which involves fundamental policy change. Instead they’d like to blame “corporate greed” and do nothing.