New Hampshire 2026 Legislative Priorities

2026 New Hampshire Legislative Priorities

Victory in the fight against cancer requires bold new public policies that promote cancer prevention, early detection of cancer, and expand access to quality, affordable health care. Lawmakers make many decisions that impact the lives of Granite Staters impacted by cancer and their leadership is vital to defeating this disease. In 2024 the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) will work with the NH Legislature on legislative and regulatory efforts that provide affordable, adequate access to health insurance including Medicaid, ensure adequate funding for lifesaving cancer screening and prevention programs, and enact prevention policies to protect kids from tobacco products and help support those who are trying to quit. We will be making the following fact-based policies a priority and ask for your support:

Ensuring Access to Quality Care

• Medicaid Defense: The preservation of eligibility, coverage, and access to Medicaid remains critically important for many low-income state residents who depend on the program for cancer and chronic disease prevention, as well as early detection, diagnostic, and treatment services. ACS CAN will work to ensure Medicaid enrollees have adequate access and coverage and will oppose proposals that create barriers to care for cancer patients, survivors, and those who could be diagnosed with cancer.
• Access to Biomarker Testing: ACS CAN will advocate for improved coverage of comprehensive biomarker testing. Progress in improving cancer outcomes increasingly involves the use of precision medicine, which uses information about a person’s own genes or proteins to better diagnose and treat diseases like cancer. Biomarker testing is an important step to accessing precision medicine which includes targeted therapies that can lead to improved survivorship and better quality of life for cancer patients, but insurance coverage for biomarker testing is failing to keep pace with innovations and advances in treatment.

Cancer Prevention and Early Detection

• Breast and Cervical Cancer: ACS CAN will advocate to maintain funding of for Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening program, for low-income uninsured and underinsured women administered by the NH Department of Health.
• HPV: ACS CAN supports legislation to increase uptake of the HPV vaccine including policies to strengthen school vaccination requirements, facilitate pharmacists’ ability to administer vaccines to children, and appropriate funding for HPV vaccine education and administration.

Reducing the Toll of Tobacco

• Tobacco Taxes: As the state works to identify funding strategies to fund critical programs, ACS CAN will advocate to increase the cigarette tax by $1.00 per pack with a parallel tax on all other tobacco products. Increasing the price of cigarettes and all other tobacco products through regular and significant tobacco tax increases helps prevent kids from starting to use tobacco and helps support people who are trying to quit.  $46.21 million of the revenue from the tobacco tax increase should be used to fund and sustain fact-based, statewide tobacco prevention and cessation programs.
• Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Funding: ACS CAN will work to increase funding for fact-based, statewide tobacco prevention and cessation programs to $1 million.  Increasing funding to $1 million will allow the program to rehire staff eliminated after the program was defunded las year.
• Access to Tobacco Cessation: ACS CAN will advocate for all insurance plans, including the state Medicaid program, to provide a comprehensive cessation benefit that covers individual, group, and telephone counseling and all FDA-approved tobacco cessation medications without cost-sharing or other barriers to accessing care.

Cancer Research Funding

• Comprehensive Cancer Control Program Funding: ACS CAN will work to protect/increase appropriations for state comprehensive cancer control programs.
• State Cancer registries:  ACS CAN will work to protect or increase appropriations to support state cancer registries which provide the data-driven foundation for the state cancer control efforts.

Local Control

• ACS CAN supports the authority of local governments to pass local policies that go beyond state laws to help families be healthy, safe and secure. Policymaking at the local level allows innovation and creative problem solving that builds on local strengths and addresses local needs. ACS CAN works at the local, state and federal levels to ensure everyone has a fair and just opportunity to prevent, fight and survive cancer. ACS CAN will oppose legislation that restricts the freedom of local leaders to best serve your shared constituents. 

For more information, contact: Mike Rollo, NH Government Relations Director ACS CAN 

[email protected] Phone 603-518-6469  

ACS CAN is making cancer a top priority for public officials and candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. ACS CAN empowers advocates across the country to make their voices heard and influence evidence-based public policy change as well as legislative and regulatory solutions that will reduce the cancer burden. As the American Cancer Society’s nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy affiliate, ACS CAN is critical to the fight for a world without cancer. For more information, please visit www.fightcancer.org.