SANTA FE, N.M. — It was a big day for health care and horses in the roundhouse.

At this point in the session, house and senate lawmakers are hustling to get bills moving from one chamber into the other.

Wednesday, the house sent the senate a bill to recruit more healthcare workers to New Mexico, specifically ones that graduated from New Mexico’s public universities.

The $2 million proposal instructed state agencies to start reaching out to graduates from the past 10 years currently working in key healthcare areas and see if they’re willing to move back to New Mexico. And the bill’s sponsor said the state will help out every step of the way.

“When we get a hold of these recruits, we also lay out all of the programs that incentive programs we pass for health care workers, like loan forgiveness, like tax credits,” Rep. Marianna Anaya said. “If they continue through this, we also start connecting them with any of the childcare incentives that we’ve passed. We help their spouses find jobs as well. We’ll help them with house hunting.”

There was significant pushback on this from Republicans, who argued there are better ways to recruit healthcare workers, but the bill still cleared the house floor.

Meanwhile, the senate unanimously approved a bill Wednesday to create a new $300 million Medicaid trust fund, essentially guaranteeing funding for the program 768,000 New Mexicans rely on, in case of federal budget cuts.

“I think this is a very smart, proactive move to perfect to prepare and work through the changes that are happening at the federal level,” said Peter Wirth, the Senate floor majority leader.

As for how horses fit into all of this, that was a completely different debate on the house floor Wednesday.

House lawmakers approved a new regulatory framework for dealing with the overpopulation of wild free-roaming horses in New Mexico without killing them. The bill provides new avenues for adoption and fertility control, and it actually makes slaughtering wild horses a misdemeanor.

However, some lawmakers had other suggestions on what to do with the horses.

“Is there any talk about, and I’m not trying to rile anybody up, is there any, is there any talk about possibly butchering some of these horses to feed our folks that need protein?” Rep. Harlan Vincent said.

The answer to that was no. The bill cleared the house with strong bipartisan support and is now headed over to the senate, where similar bills already found success in previous years.