A. Access to health care reduces long-term medical and social costs. The effectiveness of statewide health care has been decreased by excessive fragmentation and failure to maximize the use of existing in-state revenues and to develop effective ways of drawing upon potential federal revenue sources. An effective statewide health care system must retain local health care efforts, stimulate local innovations for meeting particular health care needs and use existing resources to expand health care options, especially for those citizens unable to pay for their own care.

B. The purpose of the county-supported medicaid fund is to leverage existing resources to better address the state's health care needs. The county-supported medicaid fund will be used to accomplish this purpose by using local revenues to support the state medicaid program and to institute or support primary care health care services pursuant to Section 24-1A-3.1 NMSA 1978. Money appropriated from the county-supported medicaid fund to institute or support primary care health care services pursuant to Section 24-1A-3.1 NMSA 1978 shall be supplemental to general fund appropriations.

History: Laws 1991, ch. 212, § 2; 1993, ch. 321, § 19; 1996, ch. 29, § 5.

The 1996 amendment, effective May 15, 1996, in Subsection B, inserted "or support" in the second sentence and added the last sentence.

The 1993 amendment, effective July 1, 1993, substituted "to support the state medicaid program" for "solely to expand eligibility for federal medicaid optional coverages in supplementation to mandated federal medicaid services" in the second sentence of Subsection B.