Jack Brooke has done a lot of living in his nearly 88 years.
As a child, he listened to the advent of rock ’n’ roll on a plastic radio. He s pent two years in the Coast Guard in the 1960s. He sold life insurance before building his own business as a management consultant.
“Life has just been great, all the way through,” Brooke said.
These days, though, Brooke needs help accomplishing some of the tasks that keep life great. As part of his veteran benefits, a caregiver regularly visits his Santa Fe apartment to assist him with daily tasks — doing the laundry, making the bed, driving to the grocery store.
However, caregiving services for New Mexico veterans like Brooke have been subject to additional strain in recent months. Between 2025 and 2026, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs slashed reimbursement rates for home health aide services in New Mexico by nearly 20%, a move caregiving agencies and state officials have argued will reduce access to care for a portion of the state’s 150,000 veterans.
The reduced rates remain in place, despite pressure from members of Congress and trade associations. The next step in that advocacy will be legislation and, if necessary, litigation.
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat who has led lawmakers from New Mexico and Texas in urging Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas Collins to undo the rate reductions, said he plans to introduce legislation to address the decreased rates.
“Homecare services are not luxuries: They allow disabled and elderly veterans to remain in their homes and live with dignity,” Heinrich said in a statement.
A new coalition of caregiving companies also has formed to continue pressing the federal agency to undo the rate reductions. It is prepared to pursue litigation against the VA if the agency doesn’t backtrack on the home health rate cuts, said Angelo Spinola, chair of the home health, home care and hospice practice group at the nationwide Polsinelli Law Firm, which represents the coalition.
“There have been providers who have cut benefits and cut staff. There are veterans that can’t get the care that they need or the quality of care that they need because they don’t have the same features and support services that were being provided in the past,” Spinola said.
“It’s a real problem,” he added, “and hopefully, in light of the fact that we are sending our troops to war right now, we could find a way to take care of them at home.”
The VA insisted, however, the decrease resulted from an agency mandate to ensure the rates align with prevailing rates in a local market, agency press secretary Quinn Slaven wrote in an email to The New Mexican.
“The rate reduction in New Mexico and rural areas of Texas … reflect our assessment that prior rates for these areas far exceeded prevailing market rates,” he wrote. “Bringing these rates in line with market conditions is not expected to have any effect on Veteran care.”
The steep declines
Veterans Affairs sets the reimbursement rates for care each year, with rates differing from state to state and, in some cases, city to city.
Those rates are supposed to cover the cost of care, including caregivers’ wages and overhead like employee benefits, taxes, rent and utilities.
In 2025, the VA paid New Mexico home health aides — who perform hands-on personal care to assist with clients’ activities of daily living — $16.75 for every 15 minutes of work, the federal agency’s fee schedule shows. That’s $5.17 more than the national average of $11.58.
Starting Jan. 1, the reimbursement rate for home health aides dropped to $13.50 in New Mexico, the fee schedule shows. That’s a 19% decrease.
Cuts were even bigger in Texas. In parts of the state including El Paso, Amarillo and West Texas — known in VA rate sheets as the “rest of Texas” — the rate for home health aides dropped from $16.75 to $9.50 between 2025 and 2026.
New Mexico home health agencies were quick to voice their opposition to the rate reductions, arguing such changes would chip away at their businesses’ already-thin margins. The move came amid a number of workforce challenges for caregiving agencies, including a dearth of providers, rising demand from New Mexico’s aging population, and the additional cost of serving rural areas — which have already caused some companies to close their doors.
Judy Sanchez, director of operations at Comfort Keepers of Santa Fe, the local franchise of a nationwide home care company, has been a vocal critic of the rate cuts. More than two-thirds of the agency’s clients are veterans.
Comfort Keepers of Santa Fe hasn’t reduced its services in the wake of the rate cuts, but Sanchez said she worries they’ll worsen recruitment and retention issues.
National policymakers, she said, “don’t see the rural areas.”
Brooke, a client of Comfort Keepers of Santa Fe, hasn’t lost any services due to the rate reduction. But he said he doesn’t understand the logic behind the change.
Caregiving services enabled Brooke to become a longtime volunteer for a local youth mentorship program. Having the laundry done, the bed made, the pantry full, he said, increased his “spread of value” to the community at large.
“If anybody is trying to cut benefits from veterans, I cannot understand the reasoning — because what you’re doing is you’re cutting off your relationships with other people who need your time and effort,” Brooke said.
Congress responds
Heinrich and the other four members of New Mexico’s all-Democratic congressional delegation, plus a Texas congressman, wrote a letter in March calling the cuts “unacceptable and irresponsible.”
Collins responded to the letter earlier this month, asserting the rate reduction reflected an agency assessment that rates in New Mexico and rural Texas exceeded “prevailing market rates.”
“Aligning these rates with market conditions is not expected to affect Veteran care,” Collins wrote in the response letter.
He added, “While VA is aware that some home care providers in the region have urged VA to reverse this decision, we have not seen any data indicating a lack of home care resources over the last few months.”
Heinrich called Collins’ response the kind of “D.C. talk” that makes him sick.
“Once again, the Trump administration is refusing to acknowledge that their cuts to the VA are having real consequences for New Mexico veterans and their families,” Heinrich said in a statement.
He noted he plans to introduce legislation to reverse the rate cuts and ensure “veterans get the care they are owed.”
Next step: Litigation
The coalition of home care providers has sent a “notice of dispute” to the head of the VA, essentially taking issue with the agency’s lack of transparent reasoning on the rate cuts, said Spinola of the Polsinelli firm.
In the notice, sent April 27, Spinola called out the agency’s failure to disclose the calculations, data and reasoning underlying its fee schedule and argued the reductions do not “reflect the significant differences in cost of care delivery between urban and rural localities.”
“These hurdles make recruiting and retaining qualified providers difficult in the best of times, but this rate cut further strains the fragile lifeline this Veteran has to the care they need and deserve,” Spinola wrote.
The letter demands the VA revert back to the fiscal year 2025 rates for New Mexico and the “rest of Texas,” and asks the agency to “commit to greater transparency and engagement” with providers in the future.
The coalition’s letter requested a response from Collins within 30 days, a deadline that will elapse Wednesday.
“Absent a timely and adequate response, the Coalition is prepared to pursue all available legal remedies,” the letter added.