OPINION: Patients of a lesser god or victims of an unjust bureaucracy?

Did you know that if you are a Doña Ana County resident without health insurance coverage diagnosed with cancer that you will be denied an appointment and ultimately denied life-saving cancer treatment at Memorial Medical Cancer Center (MMC)

Most folks I ask answer, shockingly, "No!" Yet, many residents who have experienced this devastating denial can substantiate this as their reality. Regarding health care access, I emphatically believe our leaders have forgotten their responsibility to those they serve.

These leaders are the source for solutions to reduce the cruel inequities and disparities in health care access. Health care is not a privilege reserved for the wealthy; it is a human need. No one human is superior to another in terms of getting an illness or getting treatment for such. All residents are taxpayers deserving of health care for any illness. How did this become such a problem? The injustice begins at the top levels of our government and trickles down to the ground level of health care.

In 2003, our public hospital, Memorial Medical Center, was bleeding losses, reportedly $1 million/month — a looming destabilization of the health care system. City/county leadership decided to lease our public hospital to a private entity. This historical event was critical to difficulties we experience today. New Mexico statutes dictate that the responsibility for indigent care falls to the counties. Circumstances changed once the public hospital was leased.

The county/city managers have a seat on the MMC board to provide oversight and accountability to lease compliance. The lessee was supposed to maintain the status quo of the public hospital to provide indigent care and continuation of services. Yet, these responsibilities have not been upheld by lessors or lessee, as the medical denials show.

The decline in health care services shows the failure of leadership. County leadership includes Health and Human Services, which has not upheld its own mission "to improve the quality of life by identifying and addressing unmet health and human service needs."

The county has also failed in its responsibility of NM Statute 27-5-2: to recognize that each individual county is the responsible agency for … hospital care or the provision of health care to indigent patients. The lessors failed in compliance oversight; however, the city did establish the Telshor Facility Fund from their monies acquired from the lease, to grant funds to city nonprofit organizations that "support … continued well-being, safety or improvement to lives of sick, indigent or low-income people."

My continual advocacy has not improved the unjust, inhumane discrimination that continues. I've presented the most recent of many denials to DAC leaders for a disabled, indigent patient in the DAC Healthcare Assistance Program diagnosed with breast cancer who has been denied cancer care at MMC due to lack of insurance, despite the county updating their indigent health care resolution adding cancer treatment on Aug. 22.

No response came from the county manager or attorney. The director said they were working on a contract, but none has appeared. These denials/delays can have grave consequences for this suffering patient, as cancer doesn't wait for paperwork before it progresses. While this patient and others like her are left to feel like patients of a lesser god, they are really victims of poor policy enforcement and bureaucratic shortfalls. Time for change is overdue.

Yolanda Diaz is a patient advocate, president, executive director and disrupter of the status quo for Cancer Aid Resource & Education Inc. of Las Cruces.