Casey McDermott

Sure, the prospect of being a delegate to a national political convention has always been a big deal — but it's usually also kind of a formality.

By the time a convention rolls around, parties typically know who’s gathered enough support to earn the nomination, according to whatever rules they’ve established in advance.

Not so in 2016.

Each week, NHPR's Casey McDermott rounds up the stories that made news in New Hampshire.

Want to catch up a bit earlier on the headlines you might have missed? Sign up for our Friday news email, The Rundown, and get it delivered right to your inbox. Here's the link. 

The bobcats (and their defenders) can breathe a big sigh of relief. 

Childcare for infants in New Hampshire is the 12th most expensive in the nation, according to a new report from a group calling for broad reform on childcare affordability across the country.

In New Hampshire, there’s about a 5-year gap between the life expectancy for adult women at the top of the income bracket and those at the bottom. For men in the same age group, the gap’s more than nine years wide.

That's according to new data released by The Health Inequality Project, which takes a sweeping look at the relationship between income and mortality across the country.

Just catching up on this week's headlines? Here's what you might've missed.

  Above the Fold: Water worries have plenty of people on edge.

The question of whether to continue New Hampshire's expanded Medicaid program has been one of the top State House policy debates this year.

But it's something local governments are mulling over as well. In City Halls across the state, officials say the program has led to some significant savings: in the slice of taxpayers’ money set aside for medical and prescription aid, and indirect savings in other areas.

At least five men and five women have died of drug overdoses in New Hampshire so far in 2016, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

The actual number of drug deaths this year could be higher, as an additional 86 possible overdose cases are still awaiting toxicology. It can take several months for the state to fully review a suspected overdose to confirm the cause of death.

A state website that helps people compare prices across healthcare facilities relaunched this week with an expanded library of medical procedures and new information on hospital-quality measures.

The new version of NHHealthCost.Org features 31 additional medical procedures, including physical therapy, behavioral health and chiropractic care. Cost estimates for 16 dental procedures are now available, as well as new information on the retail price of 65 brand-name and generic drugs.

At least three people have died from drug overdoses so far this year in New Hampshire, but the state medical examiner's office is awaiting toxicology results on another 60 cases that have come into its lab this year.

According to the most recent data, at least 420 people died from drug overdoses in 2015 — that figure is more than double what it was two years ago.

Newly announced 1st Congressional District candidate Pam Tucker said this week that she hopes to stand out in an already-competitive Republican primary by pitching herself as the only one who's consistently stood on conservative principles.

Rich Ashooh, a longtime defense executive and director of the Warren Rudman Center at UNH Law, says he’s “seriously considering” another run for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District.

New Hampshire residents hoping to get access to medical marijuana are still waiting for the state’s dispensaries to open. 

Right now, those new facilities still have to go through a few more rounds of inspections before they can open their doors and start serving patients. Once they do open, patients will only be able to visit one dispensary at a time. And for residents in the northernmost region of the state, the nearest dispensary could be at least two hours away.

A little over a week ago, Linda Philibert was just another regular at Blake’s Restaurant on Manchester’s West Side.

But there was little that was regular about her recent stop there last Monday morning.

Gov. Maggie Hassan ordered New Hampshire flags to half staff to honor Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died this weekend at age 79.

“Justice Scalia served our country with honor and our entire nation mourns his sudden loss,” Hassan wrote in a statement. “Tom and I send our deepest condolences to Maureen, his entire family, and his many friends, loved ones and colleagues.”

An undercover video claiming to show out-of-state residents attempting to vote in the presidential primary is being reviewed by the Attorney General and is likely to renew a years-long debate over voter ID rules in New Hampshire

As state officials feared, drug overdose deaths rose significantly in New Hampshire last year, to well over 400 cases.

The latest data from the state's medical examiner show that 414 people suffered fatal overdoses in 2015, up from 326 in 2014 and 192 the year before.

  On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, speaking to an estimated 300 people inside a packed American Legion Hall in Manchester, Ted Cruz’s last pitch to voters boiled down to this: The other guys in the race might say they’re running as true conservatives, but he’s the only one with the track record to prove it.

“Nobody on that debate stage stands up and says, ‘Hi, I’m an establishment moderate squish, I stand for nothing,’” Cruz said, prompting laughs from the audience. “They run” pretending to be us.”

Neither Morgan Brady nor Danielle Martin has made it to one of the dozens of political events hosted at their school, Saint Anselm College, in the last year.

“We’re nursing students,” Martin explained, somewhat apologetically. “So we spend a lot of time in the labs. We don’t see much sunlight.”

Still, that doesn’t mean they haven’t felt the primary’s near omnipresence on their campus.

At campaign stops in Henniker and Hooksett on Wednesday, Texas Senator Ted Cruz riffed heavily on his ideas for reforming Washington, directing plenty of anger at the so-called political establishment.

And in this way, the Republican presidential candidate said he’s found some common ground with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, one of his Democratic rivals.