Hospitals should be required to pay property taxes, just like the rest of us

To The Daily Sun,

This is report #42 addressing the happenings in the State House in Concord. “Crossover” occurred, which means the House finished the remaining bills initiated by representatives and sent them to the Senate and the Senate did likewise. Some are trivial like naming roads and bridges, but others are significant.

SB-313 on the expansion of Medicaid passed the House. I opposed the bill. I am willing to help those in need, but SB -313 is a bailout for hospitals and insurance companies. We have “non-profit” hospitals with CEOs that make up to $1.5 million yearly. I don’t begrudge the salary, but hospitals should pay property and business taxes just like other companies. Nobody wants to address the fact that federal Medicaid financial assistance to New Hampshire is slowly being eliminated. This means you New Hampshire taxpayers will have to find a way to pay the difference. While the hospitals were willing to cover this difference, the federal bureaucrats rejected this solution. Now the shortfall is being paid from the liquor profits that was designated to pay for treatment of alcohol addiction. I guess this is acceptable since half of Medicaid dollars pay for drug treatment. However, hospitals should become taxpayers. I did like one feature of the Medicaid bill that requires a work component for able-bodied recipients. It is a start though not perfect.

We heard testimony on SB-593 in the Criminal Law Committee. This is a bill to eliminate the New Hampshire death penalty, replacing it with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The major concern appeared to be fear of executing an innocent person. I could not get any pro-abortion anti-death penalty types to relinquish their pro-death position on 1.4 million known innocent pre-born babies that are murdered every year. The death penalty is somewhat of a moot point in New Hampshire since there is only one person on death row and even his lawyer admits that while he committed the crime, the appeals will go on forever. Additionally, the law has a very limited applicability since the death penalty only applies to the murder of a police officer. By-the-way, when this one person is executed, a new facility will be built since the last person executed was hung in 1939.

This next week will be interesting with the hearing of a Constitutional Amendment Concurrent Resolution, CACR-22, called Marsy’s Law. This proposal was formulated by an out-of-state victim’s rights organization. N.H. already has good laws to address the rights her citizens. Any problems could be corrected with simple tweeks of existing laws. Nowadays it seems everybody wants to be a victim with special rights. The hearing is Tuesday, 10 a.m. and you are welcome to attend. Room 206-208 in the Legislative Office Building located behind the Statehouse.

Dave Testerman

Representative for Hill and Franklin

Franklin