By Arnie Alpert, Active with the Activists

Arnie Alpert spent decades as a community organizer/educator in NH movements for social justice and peace.  Officially retired since 2020, he keeps his hands (and feet) in the activist world while writing about past and present social movements.

CONCORD—Three critics of proposed cuts to Medicaid in the state budget who were arrested Tuesday at the Legislative Office Building when they staged a “die-in” at the close of the day’s conference committee on the budget were released an hour later and told to appear in Concord Circuit Court on Aug. 8.

Just after budget conference committee members acknowledged they would not reach agreement that day, Jules Good, Lisa Beaudoin, and Sarah Chapman (who goes by the name, “Sparrow”), dressed in black, left their seats and lay down on their backs on the floor by the tables where the legislators were sitting. 

[See related story https://indepthnh.org/2025/06/17/group-ii-retirement-impasse-has-senate-and-house-reconvening-on-budget-wednesday/]

While House members in the Committee of Conference have agreed to restore cuts the House approved to reimbursement rates for providers of Medicaid services, the budget still contains Medicaid work requirements and monthly premiums which advocates say will drive people off the Medicaid rolls thus denying them needed care.

“Clear the room,” said State House safety services director Chris Vetter as Jules Good began reading statements from Medicaid recipients from the floor, including this one from Bristol resident, Bridget Regan.

“The ability to access affordable and quality health care for myself and my children is the only reason I was able to rise from poverty and obtain a graduate degree so I could go on to help others as a clinical mental health counselor.  Please understand that it takes people time to move from a place of financial vulnerability, and taking away their health care does nothing to help,” Good read.

“My family has relied upon Medicaid for many years,” Sparrow told me before the die-in.  Without access to services their son has gotten from Medicaid, “I do not know if he would even be here,” they said.  Sparrow said they hoped the action would draw some eyeballs.  Compared to other forms of advocacy, an act of civil disobedience would be “a little more dramatic in a way that’s still peaceful.”

In April, Beaudoin and Good led dozens of Medicaid supporters into the governor’s office, where they insisted on getting a meeting with the governor.   While the governor did meet with a small group the following week, the activists associated with a campaign called “Hands Off Medicaid” were not satisfied with the outcome and decided additional attention needed to be called to budgetary measures which would drive people off the program.

Hands Off Medicaid has also called attention to the elimination of the state’s Interest and Dividends Tax by previous legislatures, which reduced state revenue and created the rationale for cutting people off Medicaid.  Before their late afternoon die-in, the campaign passed out pink squeaky-toy pigs with a message pinned on their backs.  “Medicaid recipients are not your piggy bank,” they said.  “No monthly premiums.  No work requirements.  No prescription copay increases.  No Medicaid cuts to fund tax breaks for the rich.”

Medicaid is a federal-state partnership that provides health insurance to disabled adults, low-income families with children, and adults in low-wage jobs without health insurance benefits.   “Elected officials need to understand that Medicaid needs more funding, not less, and that Medicaid is a bargain compared to the alternative,” Beaudoin said.

While New Hampshire legislators were deliberating over Medicaid’s fate here, Republicans in the U.S. Senate were proposing work requirements even more onerous than the ones already approved by the House of Representatives in what President Trump calls his “big, beautiful bill.”  

At a Tuesday morning news conference in the LOB lobby with health care providers and patients who have benefited from Medicaid, Dr. Melinda Asbury of Monadnock Family Services said Medicaid work requirements “will not work.” 

Explaining that people with chronic illnesses such as substance abuse disorder and mental illness go through periods of relapse and recovery, she said, “Medicaid work requirements, that is mandating work across the board, simply is not going to work, because these diseases do not work that way. People have times of health and people have times of illness, and it is impossible to predict where someone is going to be at any point in time along the recovery journey. So Medicaid work requirements in that way will not work.”

From the floor of LOB Room 210 Tuesday, Good read aloud from the statement of woman talking about her son. “My son has struggled with mental illness since he was very young, with his first suicide attempt being at the age of seven. After years of challenges including treatment refusal, arrest and hospitalization, the case managers at the hospital helped him apply for Social Security disability and Medicaid. Upon his discharge, he was connected to the acute care team with the community mental health center and the mental health court. This was life changing for my family. My son was getting the treatment he needed.”

While Good read stories from people who had benefited from Medicaid and Sparrow lay silently beside them, Vetter tried to negotiate an end to the demonstration with Beaudoin.

Kneeling over and whispering quietly as Beaudoin lay on the floor, Vetter said that since the committee meeting had ended, the room was no longer a common area.  “So you can go out in the lobby until five o’clock,” he proposed.  “You know that you’re allowed to be there, but you can’t be in the committee room once the committee’s over, because of all the stuff, the sensitive items, and the computers and all that stuff that’s in here, so I’m gonna ask you guys, if you want to get up and go sit in the hallway until five o’clock, you’re absolutely welcome to do.”

“Have members of the committee of conference removed work requirements and Medicaid monthly premiums from the budget?” Beaudoin asked.

Vetter tried to explain once more that the meeting was over for the day.

Beaudoin said they’d stay until either the work requirements and monthly premiums were taken out of the budget or they were removed by State Police.

By then, four troopers were present in the committee room.

“What’s your long term plan?” Vetter asked.  “Would you stay here tomorrow until the meeting resumes?”

Beaudoin said that’s exactly what they would do.  She also explained that no one would resist arrest.  

“I am telling you guys the room has to be secure. We need all of you guys to leave,” one of the Troopers joined in.

“You’re essentially being arrested for disobeying,” Vetter said.

At that, Beaudoin, Good, and Sparrow rose up off the floor.  The troopers cuffed them, walked them to the elevator and out the door of the LOB to cruisers parked on Capitol Street.  From there, they were taken to the Troop D barracks on Ironworks Road and released an hour later with disorderly conduct charges and an order to appear in Concord Circuit Court on August 8.  

In a statement released Tuesday evening, the Department of Safety said State House security staff and troopers asked the individuals to leave numerous times.  “However, despite repeated warnings that they would be arrested, the group refused to leave the room inside the closed facility. The three individuals were then taken into custody without incident,” the statement said.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Jules Good said after being released from police custody.  “We would not have done this and risked arrest if we were not fighting for a cause that we deeply believe in, that has a real life or death consequence for people on Medicaid in our state.  So I feel glad that we did what we did.”

Beaudoin said that if the Medicaid cuts survive the conference committee, the group will shift its emphasis to Governor Ayotte and urge her to veto the budget.  “We will continue to put pressure and make it very uncomfortable for elected officials in New Hampshire to pass any cuts to Medicaid, especially in the face of having ended the Interest and Dividends Tax.”

“I hope people were listening,” Sparrow said.