Opinion

Mandates coverage keeps people uninsured

Like most states, New Hampshire struggles with the issue of affordable health insurance coverage for its citizens. Roughly 150,000 people across the state lack health insurance. Of this number, a large group, approximately 75,000, are working-age individuals or their families…

It’s time to regulate tobacco

In New Hampshire, nearly 1,900 children a year - approximately 37 per day - become regular smokers. In our state alone, we spend $564 million on health-care costs directly caused by smoking. Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death…

Low-income children deserve support

Last year, 6.6 million children from families between 100 percent and 200 percent of the poverty level received health insurance through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, and I fully support increasing this effort by 60 percent over…

Governments gone wrong

It is fall, and things change quickly. Leaves, like blossoming flowers, are on our minds and in the headlines these days. Down in Merrimack, a high school senior’s flower-holding portrait was banned from the school’s yearbook on grounds that it violated…