Santa Fe, NM — State Senator Gabriel Ramos (R-Silver City) is calling out the Lujan Grisham administration after discovering that the NM Office of the Superintendent of Insurance (OSI) quietly signed an order this month forcing private health plans participating in the NM Health Insurance Exchange to cover sex-trait modification procedures, thereby committing precious tax dollars to subsidize these procedures. Senator Ramos already issued a separate press release criticizing a previously announced decision by the Health Care Authority (HCA) which will require taxpayers to fund such procedures for those on public assistance. With this latest order, the administration is now expanding this radical move to put the same mandate on private health care insurers while asking taxpayers to foot the bill.
The order, filed August 10 and posted to OSI's website with no public announcement, establishes the specific procedures, diagnosis codes, and drugs eligible for what the agency calls "defrayal," a mechanism that requires the state itself, not insurance companies, to pick up the cost of coverage mandates that go beyond federal essential health benefits. The list includes surgical procedures such as mastectomies, breast augmentation, and genital reconstruction surgery, along with a range of hormone therapies, and explicitly includes the diagnosis code for gender identity disorder of childhood.
"Despite Democrats' rhetoric about 'affordability' for New Mexico families, their leaders clearly don't mind putting these same families on the hook to pay for radical gender reassignment surgeries," observed Senator Ramos. "Worse yet, nobody voted on this. There was no debate, no transparency, and certainly no public hearing to determine whether taxpayers approve of their precious tax dollars being used for this purpose. I suspect that the administration knows what I know… that New Mexicans don't approve, and they certainly don't appreciate new regulations being issued while they hope no one's watching."
Senator Ramos said the order compounds concerns he raised just last week after the Health Care Authority announced it would use state dollars to continue funding gender-transition treatments for minors after the federal government announced it was ending Medicaid and CHIP funding for such services in October.
"First it was Medicaid, and now it's the individual insurance market too," Ramos said. "Every time we turn around, this administration finds a new way to make hard-working New Mexicans pay for their radical ideology, all while claiming to care about the cost of living in this state. You cannot tell working families you're focused on 'affordability' while quietly signing orders that put them on the hook for procedures that many New Mexicans find morally objectionable and medically unproven."
The Senator said he will demand a full accounting from the Office of Superintendent of Insurance about the projected cost to taxpayers for this new mandate, and he will push for legislative oversight of how the defrayal requirement is being implemented ahead of the 2027 legislative session.
