NH Union Leader – February 25, 2025
By KEVIN LANDRIGAN, Union Leader Staff
Shawn Cannizzaro of Claremont said Medicaid health insurance coverage became the life preserver he needed to recover from drug and alcohol addiction and become the owner of four sober-living houses. Carrie Duran of Wolfeboro said Medicaid has provided critical care for her disabled daughter, Katie, 13, who one day plans to go to college. And a tearful Katie Phillips said it guaranteed her access to medication to treat her ADHD so she can be a productive board member for ABLE N.H., a disability advocacy group, as well as a mentor at the Boys and Girls Club of Manchester. “It’s just been so helpful to have it,” Phillips said.
U.S. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan brought these families and a network of supportive health care providers together to raise concern about possible cuts in Congress to the state-federal Medicaid program that provides health coverage to one in seven residents in New Hampshire.
The Democratic senators jointly presided Monday at the forum at the Mental Health Center of Greater Manchester. Shaheen said President Donald Trump can’t be trusted when he said last week he has no desire to pursue any cuts to Medicaid. “Despite what President Trump might have said, the U.S. House in Washington has Medicaid cuts on the chopping block and we know that is going to have a significant impact,” Shaheen said. “This is being done so that the Republicans in Congress and President Trump and Elon Musk can come up with $2 trillion in cuts so that they can pay for the tax cuts for the wealthy in this country.”
Hassan was governor of New Hampshire when she convinced a Republican-led Legislature to pass expansion of Medicaid allowed under the Affordable Care Act. Over the past decade, it provided coverage to more than 250,000 low-income adults. New Hampshire is one of a small number of states with a “trigger” law that ends Medicaid expansion if federal support falls below the current 90% reimbursement rate. That trigger would end coverage for 60,000 people in the Granite Advantage program.
The Senate’s Joint Economic Committee earlier this month put out a report that found New Hampshire’s uninsured rate fell from 13% in 2013, prior to Medicaid expansion, to 4.7% in 2023.
Hassan is the ranking Senate Democrat on the panel. “Medicaid is a pillar of American life,” Hassan said. “It is indispensable to families that are trying to make ends meet.” Cannizzaro said he grew up in Massachusetts and said he looked down on those on Medicaid. At the time, he concluded many signed up for the insurance to “game the system” and get other government assistance benefits.
A sober-living house in Littleton brought him back from near death due to addiction to alcohol, cocaine and heroin, he said. “I felt uncomfortable asking for help,” Cannizzaro said. “Addicts don’t like to ask for anything, it’s a twisted kind of thinking.”
Cannizzaro now is co-owner of Hope 2 Freedom Recovery and a case manager working in the Grafton County Mental Health Court. Mental health and community health executives told the senators they were already struggling financially after enhanced Medicaid payments provided during the COVID-19 pandemic expired last year. Jonathan Routhier, chief operating officer of Manchester’s mental health center, said Medicaid made up 85% of the center’s revenue during COVID and a drop to 80% meant a $4.5 million loss in revenue.
As a group, mental health centers lost $20 million in unreimbursed care while federally qualified health centers saw their Medicaid revenue decline $11 million last year, nonprofit officials said.
“It’s really about people’s access to critical services at the time that they need them,” Routhier said.
Ken Gordon, chief executive officer with Coos Family Health, said Medicaid cuts would put at risk two dental clinics his program opened in the North Country and the direct care his agency’s nursing staff provides to nursing homes in the region. Jake Berry, vice president of New Futures, a public health advocacy group, said Medicaid reforms have expanded post-partum services for new mothers, reduced the need for hospital emergency-room boarding and helped lower opioid overdose deaths to an eight-year low. “It’s just unimaginable that we would go backwards and lose the gains that we made,” Berry said.
Maureen Beauregard, CEO of Easterseals of New Hampshire and Vermont, urged the senators to create a website or newsletter to advise providers of the financial threats in real time. “Medicaid is woven through everything that we do,” Beauregard said. “I find it pretty overwhelming to think about the impact that can come from this.”