The following is the letter I have submitted to the Laconia Daily Sun and the Citizen of Laconia.

To the Editor:

I read the article (Laconia Daily Sun, Tuesday, February 16^th) about the local impact of the budget cuts being pursued by the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) with quite some interest and feel compelled to share my thoughts of this story. 

I agree with Senator Sgambati calling these reductions in payments to health care providers as “unacceptable”. I don’t know why DHHS is always looked at to compensate the lion’s share of expenditure cuts for the ridiculous spending our state legislators put into the state budget. This policy only shifts costs from the state to private institutions, which then have to pass that loss onto higher costs for services which we all pay through higher health insurance premiums. This helps to create the call for completely changing our health care system into what will ultimately be a single payer system. I have a feeling that this cost shift is what we are to expect with the current federal plan being negotiated behind closed doors in Washington, until there comes a point when no private health care provider or insurance company exists to pass the costs onto. Then the rationing will start.