New Mexico is doing it right


My post two days ago discussed the fact that New Mexico had developed a plan with its hospitals to ration healthcare when and if the hospitals are all completely full. The Democratic governor is one of the sensible governors who actually believes that the health of her state’s citizens shouldn’t take second place to following a discredited ideology that has gotten us in the mess. She was pleading with New Mexicans not to drop their efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus. Two weeks ago, New Mexico implemented some of the most restrictive anti-coronavirus policies in the country, as new cases were growing exponentially.

In today’s Washington Post, an article points out that the state did activate the plan. But it also points out that this might not necessarily lead to New Mexicans dying because they were denied care. This is because, over the past two weeks, new cases have fallen by a third – obviously because of the measures the governor put in place. The test positive rate has also declined significantly.

Most importantly, “…the growth in hospital admissions has slowed.” So assuming the state doesn’t relax the restrictions too quickly, New Mexico may turn out to be one state that doesn’t need to ration healthcare – even though it was the first to announce an explicit plan to do so.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

 

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