Congressional candidate seeks help in reformation

Congressional candidate Frank Guinta brought his Health Care Listening Tour to Portsmouth on Friday.Suzanne Laurent Photo

PORTSMOUTH Frank Guinta, candidate for U.S. Congress, continued his Health Care Listening Tour on Friday morning with a stop in the downtown hosted by Mark Galvin, managing director of the New England Innovation Center LLC at 75 Congress St.

A roundtable discussion included a half-dozen Seacoast health care professionals and business leaders. Guinta is conducting the tour around the 1st Congressional District to discuss topics that include New Hampshire's affordability and access to health care under the Affordable Care Act.

While Guinta had previously visited Frisbee Memorial Hospital in Rochester, Frisbee Chief Executive Officer Al Felgar attended the meeting Friday morning in Portsmouth. Frisbee Memorial was one of 10 hospitals in the state cut out of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield's narrow network of providers for the ACA marketplace exchange.

"We cannot help reform health care and make it more affordable like this," Felgar said. "It could have been stopped. It's a travesty."

Felgar said he "wants to be part of the solution." "But, we can't if we're locked out for no good reason," he said.

Guinta said this went against President Barack Obama's two goals of expanding access to health care and decreasing cost.

Felgar recently went to a hearing in Concord with the N.H. Insurance Department with a bus-load of patients from Frisbee to get some answers, but came back empty-handed. "How can they lock out 40 percent of the state's hospitals and 1,000 doctors when there is a shortage of doctors," he said.

Patricia Cummings, an administrator at the Edgewood Centre in Portsmouth, said consumers are being affected as well. "They have no real choice," she said.

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Guinta brings Health Care Listening Tour to Portsmouth