WRAL: “Berger, after suggesting it would be handled before year’s end, has now pushed back any consideration of Medicaid expansion into the new year. It has already become entangled with unrelated concerns about the certificate of need regulations for hospital expansion. There are indications it will also be tied to concerns about medical debt and perhaps even stricter limitations on access to abortion. Medicaid expansion needs to be enacted, without delay and without any extraneous baggage. This is — no exaggeration — a life and death matter.
About 600,000 North Carolinians – equal to nearly a third of all the votes Republican state Senate candidates received – have since 2013 been denied by state law from access to affordable health care. Yes, not only has Berger and his allies failed to vote FOR expanding Medicaid, they actually passed a law (Senate Bill 4) in 2013 prohibiting it – with only Republican votes in the Senate and a single Democrat (who later switched affiliation to the Republican Party) in the House.
The costs have been staggering – as many as 14,700 lives — of those unable to get the care they needed — have been lost; 230,000 diabetics have not been able to get the life-sustaining medications they require; 107,500 mammograms missed.
And, particularly for politicians who brag of frugality and job growth, the state has missed out on $17.44 billion in federal funds. That is money North Carolina taxpayers already send to Washington that’s paying more than 90% of the Medicaid expansion costs in 39 other states and Washington, DC.
In North Carolina, Medicaid expansion is more about antipathy toward former President Barack Obama than it is a partisan matter. GOP strongholds like Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kentucky have all expanded Medicaid. It is widely supported. In September, the Emerson College Poll found 57% of the state’s voters back Medicaid expansion and just 18% oppose it.”