ATTENTION: This affects all New Mexico alternative health providers and consumers — Health Freedom Act work is underway

ALBUQUERQUE — An organization dedicated to passing a right-to-practice Health Freedom Act in the January 2007 New Mexico legislative session voted Thursday to form as a limited liability company.

In addition, members approved hiring the experienced New Mexico lobbyist team of Mike Walker and Chris Jaramillo to help steer the bill through the legislative process.

The organization seeks input from anyone involved in any  aspect of complementary and alternative health anywhere in New Mexico. Membership is free. Members may vote either via web or at twice-monthly meetings, currently being held in Albuquerque on alternating Wednesdays.

The organization, which has been meeting informally for months, selected the name, New Mexico Complementary and Alternative Medical Project (NMCAAMP), for its official charter.

If you’re interested in helping shape this initiative and build public and health-industry support for it, you are encouraged to join the group’s email list-serv.

For more information, visit the NMCAAMP website. 

The group is not seeking to establish licensing, registration or regulation of any particular alternative-health discipline in New Mexico.

Rather, according to one of the group’s founders, Wynn Werner of the Ayurvedic Institute, the group will push for “a law that will allow for the legal practice of all CAM health care disciplines that are not currently licensed in New Mexico.” (CAM is an acronym for complementary and alternative medicine.)

The proposed legislation, in its current draft, would protect the public by, among other things,  requiring practitioners to provide clients with written disclosures about their non-licensed status, their training, and the nature of their approaches or therapies. And it would guarantee clients’ rights to file grievances and/or sue any practitioner who violates the terms of the act or causes harm.

The Ayurvedic Institute has contributed $5,000 to cover the initial cost of retaining and engaging the lobbying firm. The total fee for this project, according to the contract, is $10,000, which the group is committed to raise.

(Personal note: I last met with this group to help strategize a 2006 plan in December 2005. Am very pleased to see how much progress is being made and how much the group has grown.

(We now need to reach out to consumers, holistic-health-oriented businesses, allied alternative practitioners and non-licensed holistic practitioners all over the state. hear their needs, get their buy-in and support, and get their help in raising the minimum of $10,000 we’re going to need to cover the lobbying costs and to wage this campaign, and get them to contact their state legislators and impress upon them the importance of adopting this kind of health freedom act.)

Walker expects within the next two weeks to meet with State Senator Steve Komadina,  sponsor of Senate Memorial 20 which was passed in the January ‘06 legislative session and which calls for a “STUDY TO ASSESS WHETHER THE PUBLIC’S RIGHT TO FREELY ACCESS TRADITIONAL, CULTURAL, COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE HEALTH CARE THERAPIES AND REMEDIES IS ADEQUATELY PROTECTED BY LAW.” (Capitalization is from the actual memorial and is not for emphasis)

Walker says NCAAMP needs to know Senator Komadina’s position on all this and his motivation in carrying this memorial. Walker expects to report about that at the next NMCAAMP meeting on May 10.

Just what tack the group should take won’t be clear until it has that information, he says.

Another urgent step, said Walker, will be to form the committee called for in the Memorial.

NMCAAMP can–and should–have significant influence in the formation and direction of that committee, Walker says.

NMCAAMP members were urged to consider just who should be on the committee that will conduct the study. Walker encouraged the group to limit the size of the committee to about seven.

He urged NMCAAMP to take up this issue on its listserv before the first May meeting.

Getting the right mix of members on the committee, representing the right range of disciplines will help with:

• Assuring the study is fair to a broad range of non-licensed alternative health practitioners statewide.
• Impressing the legislators with the thoroughness and credibility of the study and its findings.
• Completing a study likely to present fair and favorable findings and that is not highly slanted toward the interests of any one discipline or group of practitioners–or opponents of health freedom.
• Getting the committee to work quickly and efficiently. The study needs to completed soon and its findings distributed to (and discussed with) every legislator, and presented to the public–long before next January. 

In other action, the group appointed Werner, Susan Nichols and Christopher Merchant, M.D., as signatories and directors of the LLC.

5-12-06 UPDATE: This article has been corrected. In its initial version it had incorrectly referred to New Mexico Complementary and Alternative Medicine Project organization as being named the New Mexico Complementary and Alternative Medicine Practitioners.