What's New in Long-Term Care - February 24, 2022

2022 Legislative Update

The Second Session of the 55^th Legislative Session began at noon on January 18, 2022, and adjourned at noon, February 17, 2022.

Unlike last year, the Capitol was open to the public and lobbyists. The House held all committee meetings virtually and took public comment in the same manner. The Senate, however, held both in-person and virtual committee meetings and took public comment both in-person and virtually. The virtual meetings had some technical challenges due to unreliable internet connections.

The House wound up the 30-day session with a marathon floor session that ran through the night, lasting more than 24 hours, and capped it off with Speaker Brian Egolf’s surprise announcement that he will not run for re-election. The Senate, on the other hand, ended the session with a filibuster by Sen. Bill Sharer (R-Farmington). Unlike in the U.S. Senate, a filibuster in the New Mexico Legislature requires the legislator to actually stand and talk for the entire time – an ability that Sen. Sharer has demonstrated on numerous occasions. By speaking without interruption for the final two and a half hours of the session, he prevented action not only on the election reform and voters’ rights bill that had passed the House earlier in the morning but on all other measures still awaiting a vote in the chamber.

With only 505 total bills introduced, the 2022 legislative session was a comparatively light session, 250 of those introduced in the House and 255 introduced in the Senate. Of those, only 64 bills passed both legislative chambers and are awaiting action by the Governor.

In addition to the legislation mentioned above, there were 138 memorials, joint memorials, resolutions, joint resolutions, or concurrent resolutions.

There were 24 bills, 4 memorials, and 1 joint resolution being tracked because of their potential impact to the New Mexico Health Care Association/New Mexico Centers for Assisted Living (NMHCA/NMCAL) members (See attached bill tracker).

NMHCA/NMCAL actively advocated for the successful passage of two individual pieces of legislation: Senate Bill(SB)40 and SB138, as well as the inclusion of long-term care related funding in the state budget, House Bill 2.

SB40: Eliminates the scheduled repeal of the Health Care Quality Surcharge Act (HCQS), which was scheduled to occur on December 31, 2022, and allows the HCQS to continue in perpetuity.
SB38: Amends state statute, Section 7-9-77.1 NMSA 1978, to clarify that New Mexico nursing homes can claim a gross receipts tax deduction for Medicare payments made by Medicare Administrative Contractors.
HB2: $171 million is included in the state budget (HB2) to address the increase in staffing costs for nursing homes and hospitals.

The Governor has until March 9, 2022, to either sign (approve), veto, or take no action on legislation. Bills not acted upon by the Governor will automatically be pocket vetoed. May 18, 2022, is the effective date of any legislation that is not a general appropriation bill, a bill carrying an emergency clause, or with a specified date.

Special appreciation goes out to Charlie Marquez, Broad Spectrum, LLC, and Vicente Vargas for their advocacy and responsiveness to inquiries and efforts to gather supporting detail for legislation of interest to the organization. This facilitated communication of strong, concise arguments to legislators.

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