Tag: affordable care act

More than 70 groups call on McCrory to expand Medicaid

January 22, 2013 at 3:17 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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Just released this afternoon:

RALEIGH (January 22, 2013) – More than 70 organizations from around North Carolina released a letter this morning addressed to Governor McCrory, urging him to implement the Medicaid Expansion for low-income individuals under the Affordable Care Act.

As North Carolina begins implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Governor McCrory and the North Carolina General Assembly will have to decide whether to expand health coverage to those of more meager means – about $15,000 in earnings per year for an individual under NC’s Medicaid program.

Groups from across the state, including Duke University Health System, AARP North Carolina, and organizers from the North Carolina Justice Center and Legal Services of Southern Piedmont, represent thousands of North Carolinians in their request for expanding Medicaid to the state’s lowest-income citizens under the Affordable Care Act. Under the current NC Medicaid program, if a person between the ages of 18 and 64 does not have a serious disability or is not the parent of young children, they cannot qualify for Medicaid coverage, regardless of how poor they are. Read More…

Fitzsimon discusses election results and health policy

November 9, 2012 at 4:23 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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North Carolina Health News interviewed Chris Fitzsimon this week about the impact of the election on health care reform and what’s next in North Carolina.

Visit their web site to watch it.

 

 

 

The right’s new official message to the uninsured: “We don’t care”

July 27, 2012 at 9:44 amCategory:Uncategorized

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The evolution of the American right has been a fascinating (and occasionally terrifying) thing to watch over the last few decades. On subject after subject, the officially approved views handed down from the corporate plutocrats to their ”think tanks” and hand-selected politicians have gotten more and more extreme. Lately, it almost seems as if there’s a contest on the right to see who can outdo who when it comes to violating former taboos.

Thirty years ago, Ronald Reagan talked about combating and controlling bureaucracy. Today, groups on the right are talking about doing away with government altogether. Similar patterns have emerged on other issues. From the environment to education to immigrants to womens’ rights to guns, modern conservatives regularly give voice to ultra-radical views that betray a deep-seated contempt for the fundamentals of the American experiment and that would have shocked American conservatives of the 20th Century.

Here’s another amazing case in point: The new, officially-approved conservative line on the fact that America’s health care system leaves tens of millions of people without health insurance is an unabashed “we don’t care.”

Reporter Julie Rovner of NPR explains in this story that was broadcast this morning.

ACA’s Medicaid expansion: A great deal for the states

July 13, 2012 at 7:07 amCategory:Uncategorized

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The experts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have more hard and compelling numbers on the facts surrounding the inexplicably controversial Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act.

The takeaway: North Carolina (and all other states) would be foolish not to participate.

Consider the following:

  • The federal government will pick up nearly 93 percent of the cost of the Medicaid expansion over its first nine years (2014-2022), according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
  • States will spend just 2.8 percent more on Medicaid with the expansion than they would have without health reform, CBO finds.
  • This 2.8 percent figure overstates the net impact on state budgets because it doesn’t reflect the large savings Read More…

Things we’ll lose, things we won’t get if health care reform is repealed

July 11, 2012 at 4:01 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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Shannon Spillane of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has two excellent posts in which she spells out, respectively, four things we will lose and four things we won’t achieve if health care reform is somehow repealed. And here’s a graph that from the second post that makes the stakes very plain, indeed.