To start off I need to say that I am writing this letter as a resident of Laconia, NH in the 1^st Congressional District and not in my positions of City Councilor and Laconia Republican Committee Chairman.

I sure hope the new Obamacare health plan covers hearing aids because it appears that our ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE needs some. How does Carol Shea-Porter not hear what we, her constituents, are saying? Let us review her record this session.

During the August congressional recess the healthcare debate was going strong (one sided of course) and the elected representatives left Washington to hear from their constituents back home. That is the representatives of the other 49 states had meetings. Since OUR representatives in New Hampshire refused to meet with us until the media pressure became so great that they conceded. Carol Shea-Porter only held 2 meetings at Federal Buildings in Manchester and Portsmouth where she felt safe. These meetings were not publicized; were filled with people from Massachusetts (not her district or state); and the questions asked were, for the most part, limited to her supporters only. How can you determine what your employers (the people in your district) expect from you if only one side is presented? Was it too scary to actually hear from the people that she represents?

She voted for the original House Bill that included bribes to legislators. She apparently has no problem paying OUR tax dollars as favors to other states. I am trying to remember who she represents, since I thought it was NEW HAMPSHIRE.

The video below is from Representative Parker Griffith (R - Al). Rep. Griffith is also a Doctor and understands the problems in the health care industry and what the bill proposed by the Democratic leadership will do to America.

This video was done on March 6th and according to Rep. Griffith: "In the next 10 days, Democrats in Washington will try and jam through a massive government takeover of health care. It would raise taxes, slash Medicare benefits and destroy American jobs. It would put federal bureaucrats in charge of medical decisions that should be made by patients and doctors. And it must be stopped."

Watch the video and you decide...

This is a copy of the Op-Ed that has been submitted to The Union Leader today. I have also submitted a similar letter to the editor in the Laconia Daily Sun, Citizen of Laconia, Fosters Daily Democrat and Concord Monitor.

The primary sponsor of NH Senate Bill 505, establishing a commission to set rates at private hospitals in NH is State Senate Majority Leader Maggie Hassan (D – Exeter). This bill creates a “Health Services Cost Review Commission” to “review and approve or disapprove hospital rates and rate schedules” and is to be funded by an assessment (see Tax) levied on hospital revenues.

This commission has the ability to determine how large it becomes and is given its own authority to assess and collect a tax on hospital income, identified as “administrative assessment” on “net operating revenues.” Let me repeat that, this commission has the ability to determine it’s own size, how many employees it will have, how much money it needs to operate and to collect that money directly from the hospitals in without legislative oversight. This sounds dangerous to me.

Sen. Hassan, in her press release identifies “Maryland and other states with similar commissions study all the factors that go into hospital costs – including things like the population of Medicaid patients, uncompensated care, severity of illnesses and cost of living in a given region.” What she fails to mention is that Maryland is the ONLY state with a commission like this and that they have a special federal waiver that allows them to set all rates at hospitals including what the state must pay in Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements. Why doesn’t her bill provide the authority to force NH to pay its fair share of the Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements?

One of the driving factors in the disparity charged patients is the fact that NH has one of the lowest reimbursement rates for Medicaid and Medicare in the nation. This disparity has to be made up elsewhere. Hospitals have negotiated reimbursement rates for different procedures from the insurance companies and Sen. Hassan’s point is that an uninsured person receives a bill for the full amount of the cost but misses the point that what the uninsured actually pays is reduced more than the discounted rates insurance companies pay.