That invisibility ended in March 2026. Under a program rebranded as Turquoise Care, New Mexico became one of the first states to reimburse traditional Native American healing through Medicaid. The program, which includes the Navajo Nation as its first participant, covers services that were previously excluded from federal health financing because they did not fit into a standard medical billing code.
For Norman Cooeyate, a former governor of the Zuni Pueblo, the change is more than a financial adjustment; it is an admission that the medicine of his ancestors is legitimate health care. The new framework allows patients at Indian Health Service facilities to be referred to certified traditional healers. These encounters are no longer confined by the "four walls" of a sterile clinic; they can take place in homes, sweat lodges, or ceremonial spaces where the community feels most at peace.
The transition required a delicate reconciliation of two worlds. To process payments, administrators had to map non-Western practices to administrative codes, finding a way to value a prayer or a mineral treatment within a system built for surgeries and prescriptions. Because federal law usually prohibits paying for food or lodging, New Mexico had to seek specific exemptions to ensure that the multiday ceremonies central to indigenous life were fully recognized.
The significance of this bridge is most clear to the next generation. Taylor Russel, a medical student at the University of New Mexico, grew up watching her grandparents practice as traditional healers. As she trains to become a physician, she no longer sees her two worlds as separate. The burden of payment that once fell on the poorest families is being lifted, replaced by a system that honors the heritage of the patient as much as the science of the doctor.