New Hampshire

New Hampshire Information

October 17, 2009

Single-payer plan is best
MARCOSA SANTIAGO, MD | Letter to the editor | Concord Monitor (NH)
Our failed private insurance health care system is already more than 60 percent taxpayer subsidized. Despite enormous taxpayer expenditure, we have a health care emergency, breaking our nation’s core moral value of protecting its citizens.

September 29, 2009

Congress is just protecting its donors
John R Swartz | Letter to the editor | Concord Monitor (NH)
What’s real health care reform? I suggest looking at the U.S. Health Care Act, H.R. 676. It puts in place a professionally administered health care system, has great benefits, and is affordable and sustainable. However, our legislators’ campaign funds won’t get a penny of it.

Aug. 21, 2009

Medicare-for-all option would cover everyone, reduce costs
Thomas Clairmont, MD | Letter to the editor | Portsmouth Herald (NH)
Speaker Pelosi has pledged to hold a floor debate and vote on single-payer health reform this fall. This vote on an amendment to HR 3200 (the 1,000-plus page bill favored by the House leadership) would substitute the 27-page HR 676 as the new health care policy of the United States.

June 5, 2009

Q&A with: Single-payer advocate Dr. Thomas Clairmont
By Michael McCord | New Hampshire Business Review
Portsmouth physician Thomas Clairmont — who has practiced medicine since 1977 and is a vocal member of Physicians for a National Health Program — considers the current health reform effort a dog-and-pony show.

April 1, 2009

Help Ensure health care for all in the United States
Dr. Thomas Clairmont | Letter to the Editor | Portsmouth Herald
Health care reform is now being discussed across the country, and consensus on a new direction is likely this year. Sorry to say, the single-payer concept, supported by over half of respondents in national surveys, has not even been considered in several of the forums that have taken place so far.

March 25, 2009

N.H. house backs single-payer health plan
New Hampshire Business Review
The New Hampshire House went on record in favor of a single-payer national health-care system Tuesday, in a last minute, 192-150 roll call vote.

March 25, 2009

Real health reform
Marcosa Santiago MD | Letter to the Editor | Concord Monitor
HR 676, the gold standard of reforms, is publicly funded, privately delivered. Physicians and health care providers will practice as they do now, not as government employees. Overall cost is reduced by changing the method of payment from a fragmented multi-payer “system” (1500 insurance companies, 27000 plans) to a single payer, the government. HR676 guarantees free choice of doctors and hospitals, not insurance plans. HR 676 puts patients first, not profits. It is universal, covers everybody, ends deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, and put a stop to medical bankruptcies.

October 22, 2008

A Health-Care Fix
By JOHN R. SWARTZ | Concord Monitor (Concord NH)
Our health care mess is, at last, getting high billing. Republicans consider it a “responsibility,” Democrats consider it a “right.” Republicans want people to figure out which health care insurance benefits can be skimped on (“choice”) and to have the “responsibility” of selecting a specific plan. Democrats want you to have the same “right” to health care as you do public education, police and fire protection.

July 24, 2008

Sununu fails to find health care solution yet again
Thomas Clairmont, MD & James Fieseher, MD | Portsmouth Herald | Letter to the Editor
We’re disappointed in “the latest” health care proposals from Sen. John Sununu, which seems to amount to little more than election-year rhetoric. They do not solve the health care problems faced by most of the citizens of New Hampshire who do not already have health insurance or even for many of those who do.

May 2008

It’s Time to Pull the Plug on the US Health Care System
Paul D. Manganiello MD | Valley News | Letter to the Editor
With the Presidential election rapidly approaching there is a lot of interest being generated around health care finance reform. It is certainly on the minds of many Vermonters. This past March, Con Hogan, former Health and Human Services secretary in Vermont; Dr. Deb Richter of Physicians for a National Health Program and state representatives Topper Faun and Hilde Ojibway solicited public testimony through an interactive TV hook-up to areas throughout Vermont. Numerous individuals testified: patients, retiree’s, elected officials, and health care providers.

April 18, 2008

Shift In MD’s Opinions on Health Care
Marcosa J. Santiago, MD | North country News | Letter to the Editor
An important new study, published first week of April 2008 by researchers at Indiana University, reflects a shift in thinking among US physicians. A solid majority of doctors - 59% - now support national health insurance that would guarantee quality coverage for everyone. A plan that involves a single, federally administered social insurance fund, a Medicare-like plan guaranteeing health coverage for everyone. That’s 10% points higher than five years ago, and just slightly below the general public support (65%) as shown in an Associated Press poll last December.

March 7, 2008

Opinions of New Hampshire Doctors Contrast with Presidential Candidate Plans for Healthcare Reform
The survey found that 81% of responding physicians agree healthcare should be “available to all citizens as part of the social contract, a right similar to basic education, police and fire protection”, with 94% of primary care doctors endorsing this view. Two thirds of New Hampshire doctors, including 81% of primary care clinicians, indicated they “would favor a simplified payor system in which public funds, collected through taxes, were used to pay directly for services to meet the basic healthcare needs of all citizens”. Only one third of physicians indicated support for an employer-based system or agreed that “the free market system is the best way to create a high quality, equitable, affordable and accessible healthcare system”.

January 12, 2008

A health care system for all, that works for all
Thomas Clairmont, M.D. & Pamela Clairmont, R.N. | Portsmouth Herald
No one likes the current system with 47 million uninsured, an equal number under-insured, 50 percent of bankruptcies related to medical debt and heartbreaking story after story in the newspapers about local citizen’s problems with the health care system. So how about evidence-based governance? All you have to do is look at the systems in Canada, Britain, France and other nations to see that it is possible to devise a health care program that covers everyone the same way, without any middlemen, and where there is never any worry about being able to afford a doctor’s visit or an operation.

Monday, May 2, 2007

Single-payer system would give us the world’s best care
By DR. JOHN DALEY | Union Leader | Commentary
As a family physician on the front lines of medicine I daily see the difficulties patients face due to lack of insurance or under-insurance. Generally these patients ration their own care, disappearing for a year or two when they lose their job and insurance, only to return with sky-high blood pressures or out- of-control diabetes, effectively taking years off their lives.