The Senator says there is not going to be any difference between this commission and the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in the way they control costs. Isn’t it interesting comparing this dreadful legislation to the PUC when NH has some of the highest utility costs in the nation? Is she merely saying that the cost to go to a hospital will increase dramatically with decreased reimbursements for Medicaid and Medicare and an increased expense to this commission?

Sen. Hassan, if you want to help to reduce the cost of hospital care then perhaps the hospitals should be paid more for services received under Medicaid and Medicare. Then the loss of revenues won’t have to be passed on to the public.

Why is it good to tax more and more to create a health care plan that increases the size of government? Why is it acceptable to use the socialistic Keynesian Economic approach instead of the Supply and Demand free market approach? 

Dear Senator, if you are truly concerned with the rising cost of health care perhaps you should be looking at bringing more competition in the health insurance industry. Why is the only plan being offered include more bureaucracy and government involvement and has absolutely no cost reduction. 

There are some simple things that can be done to fix the rising costs, if our legislature cared about creating competition, which will drastically reduce costs. Things like reducing the mandates on health insurance, which might get more insurance companies wanting to do business here. You could also open up the market so that people could purchase health insurance across state lines or allow small businesses to pool together into groups of more than 100 employees so greater discounted premiums are available. Don’t forget the opportunity to create some tort reform against frivolous lawsuits so that doctors don’t have to pay a small fortune for malpractice insurance. This will create savings by not paying for unnecessary tests and procedures on defensive medicine.

To quote Charlie Arlinghaus of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, “A Health Czar in Washington is a bad idea and three Health Czars (“cost commissioners”) in Concord isn’t any better.”

Let’s not create a government take over of the hospitals and medical industry when all we need is common sense to reduce costs.