N.H. rep proposes statewide single-payer health care
(Excerpts below. Complete article here.)
A proposal to create a single-payer health care system in New Hampshire drew mixed reactions in the House on Monday, with some denouncing it as a wayward fantasy and others heralding an opportunity for a conversation on broader reform.
The legislative service request [LSR], sponsored by Rep. Peter Schmidt, D-Dover, is titled “establishing a New Hampshire single payor (sic) health care system.”
A single-payer system is a taxpayer-funded health care model through which a government provides health care to its citizens in lieu of private plans. In recent years, the idea of implementing it nationwide has gained sway among the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, endorsed it in September, breaking from Sen. Maggie Hassan, her Democratic junior colleague.
But Schmidt said New Hampshire is ready to take action on its own.
“The health care situation is very much in flux, nationally and here in New Hampshire,” he said Monday. “And the bottom line is it’s just utterly irresponsible for the New Hampshire Legislature not to engage in this situation.”
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In an unprompted statement, House Majority Leader Dick Hinch, R-Merrimack, blasted the LSR, pointing to another state’s attempt to do the same: Vermont. . . .
“New Hampshire Democrats just need to look next door to Vermont to realize that single-payer health care is not feasible,” he said. “The fact that we’re seeing legislation to even study the issue baffles me. Vermont studied it, and rejected it because it would have bankrupted their state.”
But Schmidt dismissed the critique.
“That’s like saying that your cousin broke his leg skiing because he doesn’t know what he’s doing so you shouldn’t try skiing, even though you’ve been on the college ski team and you’ve been skiing all your life,” he said. “You can’t go down that hill because he can’t.”
He argued that New Hampshire, with more than twice Vermont’s 624,000 population, is better situated to take on single-payer. And he pointed to a second LSR of his, which would create a commission to study a New England-wide single health care system to pool costs, an approach he called more viable.
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