Alderman LeBrun
| have a bill in on that this year, Alderman Lopez. |’ll pass that on to you and let you take a look at it.
Alderman O’Brien
To Alderman Lopez, unfortunately, it ran into a wall there where some people up there come from many walks of
life, and some people who said, particularly in the Senate, were former landlords themselves. Did | think it really
got a fair shake? | don’t know. | have my opinion on that particular matter. But | think the climate up there right
now is not conducive to a bill like that, and I’m hoping maybe in the next biennium things might be a little bit more
for a bill such as that. Because you're correct in bringing it up, just because the bill failed, the need did not go
away. That could happen very well today as well. So it still needs to be addressed. | agree with you and I’d be
happy to sponsor that or if Representative LeBrun has one of equal and tenured, | would support that equally as
well.
Alderman Dowd
One of the things that has concerned me over the last couple of years, because I’ve had family experience with
it, is healthcare in the state of New Hampshire. Two areas that | think the state is trying to assist with but failing
miserably is healthcare for the elderly and the veterans. Veterans — any kind of hospital service they have to go
out of state to get it. You have a clinic where they used to have a hospital. | know there’s a lot of work being done
on that to help that, so that’s good. | don’t know how many of the reps have been to the nursing homes in the
state of New Hampshire. | have to say they do a great job, but they have very limited resources, limited staffing,
very limited funding. Through no fault of their own, | don’t think the elderly are getting the services that they
actually deserve. | think that needs to be looked into.
The other thing is | heard a lot about Medicaid and Medicaid funding and not having enough of it. If you ever had
to apply for Medicaid here in the state of New Hampshire, you'd find out it’s a daunting task. It’s extremely
difficult for the people who actually need it, the elderly, trying to figure out all the paperwork in the process. | will
say the Department of Health and Human Services has great people. They go out of their way to help you, but
they’re understaffed and probably underfunded. | think they need some help. | talked to former Senator Ayotte
about this and it’s very disheartening to see how many people are missing out on the healthcare that they could
get through Medicaid funding and through the Department of Health and Human Services. They don’t know
where to start; they don’t know how to figure out the paperwork. The paperwork is huge. You could probably buy
a major building somewhere in the state easier than you could apply for Medicaid here in New Hampshire.
Something has to be done and I'll be putting my two cents in soon.
Unidentified Speaker
| think in nursing homes, mental health, corrections system, everywhere, the underlying issue we cannot ignore
is the workforce; the need for workforce. County nursing homes — that was the big thing in Hillsborough County
because they didn’t have people. They were trying to advertise, and again, it’s a vicious cycle in terms of people
with addiction, and they’re not able to get people. | think we still, as a state, are acutely in need of good youth
and workforce, and whatever we can do — especially being the second largest city and part of the largest county,
it is one of the issues. Whatever we can do to work together to have bills that would support and help in terms of
workforce, sustaining, bringing new people would have a big impact. | can tell you as a first generation
immigrant, | can see the community contributing, but it’s not enough. The incoming international
students/visitors, that has impacted tremendously. That’s something | don’t know how we address it. It’s going to
affect small states like this which short-term solution to the workforce is inward migration.
President McCarthy
| think you were talking more about just healthcare costs and —
