Cindy Rosenwald

CONCORD – New Hampshire Democrats, including Party Chair Ray Buckley and Sen. Cindy Rosenwald, D-Nashua, spoke on a call to last week to discuss the Republican Party’s pattern of dismissing the rights and entitlements of Granite State senior citizens.

Buckley remarked that President Donald Trump and the GOP have consistently hurt New Hampshire seniors, ignoring the advice from those in the medical and science fields.

“For the last three years, Donald Trump and the GOP have pushed scheme after scheme,” he said. “Trump has pushed to increase the cost of life-saving prescription drugs, and Trump and Sununu have refused to listen to medical professionals at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The party is holding the president responsible for proposed cuts to critical programs, such as Social Security and Medicare. Buckley went on to say that both Republicans running for Senate, Donald Bolduc and Corky Messner, have supported Trump’s budget cuts.

“They’ve pledged to stand with him in the Senate, instead of New Hampshire,” Buckley said.

Rosenwald said one of the biggest challenges that New Hampshire seniors face is the highest health care costs of any state in the country.

“It’s the cost of prescription drugs,” she said. “If it were up to Trump, these costs would only get higher for our seniors, forcing many to choose between buying groceries and buying life-saving medicines.”

Rosenwald alleged that since taking office, Trump has done nothing to lower prescription drug costs and instead has schemed to raise those costs.

“One of Sen. (Jeanne) Shaheen’s opponents, Messner, even said he would oppose ‘common sense legislation to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices,'” she stated. “This year, a study of one quarter of New Hampshire seniors have reported cutting out a prescribed drug due to its high cost.”

This year, Rosenwald introduced Senate Bill 686, to increase the oversight of pharmacy benefit managers and to prevent unfair cost increases throughout the supply chain.

“This way,” she continued, “no Granite Stater will have to choose between their health and putting food on the table.”

Seniors are especially struggling during COVID-19, Buckley and Rosenwald agreed.

Dwight Davis, co-owner of Senior Helpers of Southeastern New Hampshire, heralded the statements made by Buckley and Rosenwald.

Davis and his wife, Gail, run an organization located in Stratham that provides non-medical in-home care for seniors. He said they got involved because they both know the challenges and the rewards of caring for seniors and the elderly.

“We’re both providing care for our aging parents,” he said. “In our profession and in our experience of caring for elderly loved ones, we know how important it is listen to advice of medical professionals.”

He added that they work with physicians and skilled nursing companies in hospice on a daily basis and stressed the urgency of listening to guidelines set forth by health care professionals.

“That’s never been truer than now,” Davis said. “Trump refuses to listen to the advice of experts throughout the crisis. From the beginning, he’s downplayed the severity of COVID-19, along with our governor, calling it, ‘the flu.'”

Davis said he’s had the flu before, and nothing that he’s read about the coronavirus can be compared to the common flu. He added that the rush to reopen New Hampshire could exacerbate the spread of COVID-19.

“In New Hampshire, 95% of COVID-19 victims have been at least 60 years-old, and three in five were 80,” he shared. “If Sununu continues to follow Trump’s demands, and we continue to rush to reopen, these numbers are likely to get higher.”

Pam Jorgensen, co-chair of the state’s Democratic senior caucus, said that as a board member of the Manchester Senior Center, she heard Trump’s campaign promise that he would protect Social Security, but since taking office, he’s proposed billions of dollars in cuts to those programs.

“In this year alone, Trump said that he would pursue cuts to programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and critical safety net programs in his second term,” she said, “calling it ‘the easiest of all things to cut.'”

Jorgensen also pointed out that every Republican running for Senate in New Hampshire is backing him up.

“Donald Bolduc said he supports Donald Trump 100 percent and endorses Trump’s budget cuts,” she stated. “Corky Messner has similarly fought for dramatic changes in the Social Security program, which could affect hundreds of thousands of Granite State seniors.”

She also commented that the GOP is “all about raising costs of prescription drugs, refusing to make health policy based on science.”

The Telegraph asked the question if whether or not New Hampshire seniors are weighing in with the upcoming election based on the president’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The latest polling shows that Trump’s electability has dropped dramatically during this whole pandemic crisis for seniors,” Jorgensen answered. “He is now down to a 30-percent approval rating with seniors and it’s directly related to the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

A question was also asked as to what Sununu could have done to prevent the fact that three-quarters of people who have died from the coronavirus were in long-term care facilities.

“I think his mismanagement and delay of action is why we have the highest percentage of nursing home cases in the share of total cases,” Rosenwald said. “And why we have the second highest nursing home death rate as a share of total deaths in the country, second only to Minnesota. To me, this is really deplorable.”

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