BY MARISSA BERG
Budgets are about choices, priorities and making decisions about how our state government treats its citizens, especially its most vulnerable. The NH House this month approved a spending plan that cuts critical services that our most vulnerable citizens rely on, including the DD (Developmentally Disabled) waitlist. These are services that an anticipated 270+ people will require over the next two years just to meet their basic needs, and that are required by law.
Marissa Berg
As passed by the House, HB 2 also mandates a 3% Medicaid reimbursement rate cut and eliminates every prioritized need of the Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS), including an increase in funding for housing. Many providers are running homes at a loss, some losing thousands of dollars a year. These cuts will mean that housing programs and services will close. They will impact people who rely on them to survive.
Community Support Network Inc. (CSNI) collected over 100 stories within a week after the House vote about the impacts of this proposed budget on the DD population and their families. Stories about young adults who will have to stay home after they leave school at age 22, and the parents who will have to quit their jobs to stay home with them. The aging parents and family members who struggle through their own health challenges, because there is nowhere else for their loved ones to go. Stories from nonprofit agencies who will have to make heart-wrenching decisions to close residential settings, leaving individuals with developmental disabilities and brain injuries without a home.
Worse, many of these individuals do not have family members to turn to for help and stability if this budget was to become law. Here are just three snapshots:
“If Medicaid rate cuts affect my daughter’s private duty nursing, we lose home nursing coverage … nurses clock out, but parent caregivers are not given that choice, because we have to keep our adult child alive,” stated a Brentwood resident.
A Litchfield resident said, “These cuts would deeply hurt our family. Our eldest daughter will be aging out of school as of May 2026. She has required a 1:1 support person her whole life due to her extensive medical and intellectual disabilities. If our daughter does not have access to adult services next fall, either my husband or myself would have to quit our job to care for her. This means that we would lose, at a minimum, 30% of our income and have great difficulties paying our household bills.”
“My husband and I have … a 34-year-old daughter, who has a developmental disability. She currently lives in a residential setting with support. My husband and I are both elderly. We have no younger siblings or any other family members,” said a Bow resident. “There is no one to take care of our daughter when we are gone or incapacitated. If funding is diminished or stopped, we are terrified of what would happen to our daughter. Where would she live? How would she survive with no residential service funds? ” There are nearly 6,000 people with developmental disabilities and brain injuries who rely on Medicaid Waiver services every day to access the community and simply live their everyday lives. They need help with basic self-hygiene, support at work, and staff to keep them safe from themselves and others. Many live with a significant amount of support from families, but there are many who have no family support at all. Consider what advice you might give to this family from Grafton:
“My son will be aging out of school in 1.5 years. He needs 24-hour supervision. We were anticipating he would go into adult programming while my husband and I work. We are in our late 40s and are too young to retire. We cannot live off of one income. There are no daycare centers that will take a 22-year-old man. We cannot afford to pay out of pocket for someone to watch him.”
People with developmental disabilities are part of our communities, and while they can see important improvements in their daily lives, they don’t “get better.” Without more cost-effective, proactive services in the community, the proposed budget cuts will increase costs to taxpayers for institutionalization, emergency room stays and emergency services.
We ask the Senate to fully fund the DD waitlist, eliminate the 3% Medicaid rate cut, and fund room and board increases for developmental services.
Marissa Berg is executive director of the Community Support Network Inc. She lives in Goffstown.
