NH News

This week, New Hampshire’s Department of Health and Human Services identified the season’s first case of influenza. Beth Daly, chief of infectious disease surveillance at DHHS, is encouraging Granite Staters to get vaccinated.

"It’s not too early to be vaccinated," Daly says, "and the flu vaccine this year does contain different strains of the virus, so it’s important that people be vaccinated this year even if they were vaccinated last year as well."  

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Maggie Hassan says she will create a panel of lawmakers, state agencies and economists to build consensus around budget numbers. 

It would be called the Consensus Revenue Estimating Panel, Gubernatorial candidate Maggie Hassan told members of the Portsmouth Rotary Club on Thursday.  During her lunchtime address at  the Portsmouth Country Club, Hassan said the panel will help provide lawmakers with accurate budget numbers that they can agree on.

The ten New Hampshire hospitals suing the state over Medicaid reimbursement rates do have a legal basis for their lawsuit. That’s according to an order issued today by a federal judge. 

The hospitals argue that the State’s slashing of more than $250 million in Medicaid funding in the last budget violates Federal guidelines. Those guidelines are meant to ensure adequate quality and access to health care for Medicaid recipients.

New housing data suggests the New Hampshire market may be stabilizing, even while residential prices remain low.

The median sale price last month was $210,000. That’s the same price from August 2011--a signal that the number of houses for sale continues to outpace demand.

But a report from the New Hampshire Association of Realtors says the number of units sold is up more than 20% from last year. And gains are being seen in each of the state’s ten counties.

The chairman of the state board of education says it’s likely the moratorium on approval of new charter schools will be lifted later this year.

Education officials have been saying for the past two weeks that the state is $4.9 million dollars short on funding for charter schools that have already been approved this year. But speaking today on NHPR’s The Exchange, chairman of the finance committee Ken Weyler said…

Weyler: I am pretty sure that the money is there.

A Vermont man has shot a black bear weighing a little over 500 pounds, one of the largest recorded in the state in years.