New Hampshire has the highest health care costs in the nation, skyrocketing prescription drug costs and rising property taxes.
The pandemic highlights the weakness in the New Hampshire health care system. Leadership in a crisis is critical – but preparation and planning before a crisis in some cases is even more important. That’s where real leadership shines.
The Sununu administration has had the opportunity to address multiple health and safety issues prior to our current state of affairs and it has failed. Chris Sununu has vetoed 57 bills – 42 of which had bipartisan support, many of them health care related – including paid family and medical leave, and emergency funding for Planned Parenthood centers that were harmed by the Trump administration’s unethical Title X gag rule.
Sununu also vetoed SB 5, a bill to give emergency funding to New Hampshire homeless shelters and recovery centers, which are already over capacity and underfunded. This bill also included Medicaid reimbursement rate increases specifically for mental health and substance use disorder providers. The rate increases are desperately needed to attract workers into the field and help keep our recovery centers’ doors open.
Sununu has called himself a “Trump guy through and through,” as Donald Trump has tried to destroy health care for millions of people by stripping Obamacare of many of its core health provisions.
For the above reasons, I am supporting Dan Feltes in the upcoming gubernatorial election. He has a great record of addressing critical issues important to working families. We can do better with Dan.
CHARLES S. ALBANO
Warner
(The writer is a former state bureau chief for Maternal and Child Health.)