Recently, NLBHA’s own Fred Sandoval attended a question-and-answer session at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on Latino access to rural health care, with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
The full article can be viewed at the Santa Fe New Mexican’s website.
ALBUQUERQUE — Xavier Becerra is from the government, and there are only limited ways he can help.
Speaking Thursday at a question-and-answer session at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on Latino access to rural health care, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services said legal limitations and limited money approved by a deeply divided Congress make funding new priorities a “zero-sum game.”
“We cannot decrease it one penny here without decreasing it by a penny over here. … I know it’s very frustrating to hear this, but it is the truth,” he said.
That means, for example, upping Medicare reimbursements to primary care practitioners means medical specialists don’t see as big an increase, Becerra said.
Becerra joined U.S. Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández and Melanie Stansbury at the event, where attendees asked about possible solutions such as making it easier for doctors from other countries to practice in the U.S. and incentivizing medical practitioners to act as teachers and mentors.
Fredrick Sandoval, executive director of the New Mexico-based National Latino Behavioral Health Association, said he’d like to see the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration dramatically increase funding for community-level prevention programs to fight fentanyl use, saying that, across the country, only 1 in 10 Latinos over the age of 12 has access to substance abuse services.He described the fentanyl crisis as a “forest fire” that’s grown out of control.
“You don’t have just a little campfire, we have a forest fire,” Sandoval said. “The forest fire is our fentanyl issue.”
Becerra told attendees that while the issues raised are not new, the federal government has strict limits on what it can do in the realm of health care, which is considered a state responsibility, and the Health and Human Services Department has been a particular target in partisan budgetary battles.
“SAMHSA doesn’t have a tree that gives it more money, and SAMHSA is only what Congress gives us,” he said. “… This year, the Department of Health and Human Services, including SAMHSA, took the biggest cuts in order to satisfy those in Congress … who have demanded reductions.”
