NEW HAMPSHIRE – Last week, Senator Maggie Hassan heard directly from Granite Staters about the importance of protecting Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act from the tax bill put forward by Congressional Republicans and Donald Trump, which would gut health care for millions of Americans in order to pay for more tax breaks for billionaires and corporate special interests. A recent analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that the Republican bill increases the deficit by $2.3 trillion and will trigger $490 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare. More than 60 million American seniors are enrolled in Medicare. An additional recent analysis of the Republican tax bill estimates that 36,856 Granite Staters will lose their health insurance by 2034 if Republicans pass their proposed cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.
Read more below about Senator Hassan’s conversations with local health care providers and Granite Staters at the North Country Health Consortium in Littleton and Lamprey Health Care in Nashua:
By Paul Hayes
“If that program were to somehow go away, people will die.”
That was the blunt warning from Tom Mee, CEO of North Country Healthcare, during a roundtable discussion with U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan on Thursday. Mee was referring to his region’s only obstetrics program at Androscoggin Valley Hospital — one of several essential services at risk if federal Medicaid funding is cut under budget legislation backed by congressional Republicans.
The proposed cuts, Mee said, would hit rural areas like the North Country hardest, where programs such as obstetrics and behavioral health already operate at a loss and depend heavily on Medicaid reimbursement. North Country Healthcare’s obstetrics program, which serves all of Coös County and handles 80 to 100 births annually, is losing roughly $5 million each year.
Repeating his warning, Mee stated that closing the obstetrics department would have devastating impacts. “That is not speculation. That is not me guessing,” he said. “People will die.”
The roundtable, hosted by the North Country Health Consortium, drew hospital executives, public health officials, and workforce development leaders from across the region. Hassan, a Democrat, said the Republican-backed budget plan — dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill” — could eliminate Medicaid coverage for 36,000 New Hampshire residents and slash $500 billion from Medicare between 2026 and 2034.
The plan passed the House and is bound for the Senate.
“We are really faced with this situation where Congressional Republicans are pushing a plan that’s going to add costs for families [and] take away healthcare,” Hassan said. “That ultimately not only undermines our families and our healthcare system, but it undermines our economy too.” [...]
Community Health Workers Face Cuts Just As Reimbursement Becomes Possible
Annette Carbonneau, Director of Community Health Worker Programs at the Consortium, said recent pandemic-era clawbacks have already slashed funding for community health workers — and looming Medicaid cuts could unravel years of work to secure reimbursement for these services.
“We worked seven years to get Medicaid to reimburse us for community health worker services,” Carbonneau said. “And now we’re concerned that, with the proposed cuts to Medicaid, this reimbursement will be eliminated.”
She described a case of an elderly woman in northern Coös County who lost Medicaid coverage because she couldn’t navigate the renewal paperwork. Without a community health worker stepping in, she was skipping necessary care and accumulating medical debt while caring for a disabled adult son.
“I do think people are going to die because they can’t get to these connections on their own,” Carbonneau said.
If community health workers disappear, she said, people will get sicker — placing a greater burden on healthcare organizations, our primary care providers, and our critical access hospitals.
“It is moving downstream and working on the emergency, not moving upstream and working on prevention,” Carbonneau said. [...]
Ken Gordon, CEO of Coös County Family Health Services, stressed that cuts to Medicaid and Medicare won’t just hurt beneficiaries — they will destabilize care for everyone. “There will be fewer doctors and nurses available to care for all of us,” he said. “People are going to defer care. They’re not going to be able to show up to work. They’re not going to be able to be there for their families.”
Nashua Telegraph: Anxiety continues to build over possible healthcare cuts
By Chris Roberson
The recent passage of the Republican-led Big Beautiful Bill by the U.S. House of Representatives has intensified concerns among local healthcare providers as to what the legislation could mean for their patients should it be signed into law. [...]
Tracy Tinker, a certified diabetes care and education specialist at Lamprey, described diabetes as an “expensive disease.” She said that without insurance, patients would begin rationing their medications and cancelling doctor’s appointments.
“It doesn’t need to happen,” said Tinker.
Marissa Berg, executive director of the Community Support Network, said she has approximately 5,000 patients under her care.
“They don’t stop needing support,” she said. “These people aren’t going to go away.”
Astrid Henry, a licensed clinical mental health counselor at Lamprey, said 90 percent of her patients have a history of trauma.
However, without Medicaid coverage, the services offered by Henry and her colleagues would be pushed to the wayside.
“The first thing they would drop is therapy,” she said.
Susan Durkin, co-CEO at Lamprey, said more than half of her patients are at or below the poverty line.
“Our ability to care for them is really going to deteriorate,” she said. “We’re clearly very concerned.”
By Dan Splaine
“On the mind of everybody is the potential, the possibility that if the budget that the House passed will actually get passed by the Senate and signed into law, it will have a difficult and devastating effect on healthcare in New Hampshire and around the country The very wealthiest people in the country will get more tax breaks while healthcare is taken away from a really high number of Americans.” said the Seantor [...]
The Federal cuts will not eliminate the need for healthcare.” Even if you’re not covered for health care, you’re still going to need health care. So people are going to still show up, and they’re still going to need your help, “ said the Senator to the Healthcare Providers.. [...]
“When we think about these threats to Medicaid, they’re really threats to the health care system,” said Sue Durkin, CEO of Lamprey Health Care [...]
Kadesha Palmer is a mother of three, including an autistic six-year-old son named Cameron, who is reliant on Medicaid. She attended the meeting to tell about her family’s lived experience.
“Medicaid has been absolutely critical for us. It allows my son to receive speech therapy, occupational therapy, and ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) services and to see his primary care doctor regularly. Without Medicaid, we simply wouldn’t be able to afford these services.
And without these services, my son Cameron would fall behind in ways painful to even imagine. We are a low-income household. Medicaid isn’t a luxury. It is a lifeline. It’s a lifeline,” said Palmer.
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