Tag: medicaid

Editorial highlights McCrory’s shortsigtedness on Medicaid expansion

October 29, 2013 at 8:39 amCategory:Uncategorized

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In case you missed it, this Fayetteville Observer editorial helps explain the remarkable blindness of the Pope/Tillis/Berger/McCrory decision to deny health insurance to a half-million North Carolinians by refusing to allow the expansion of Medicaid at a comparatively tiny cost to the state. After documenting the disastrous impact the decision is having on poorer, rural hospitals like Southeastern Regional Medical Center in Lumberton, the editorial concludes this way:

“The rationale for the legislature’s decision was that Medicaid is “broken” because its cost rose as more people sought assistance while recovery from a record recession lagged.

The illogic of that position must be drawing some political heat. This week Senate and House leaders took to filming a protest and doing head counts of protesters and journalists – small-bore politics.

‘An expansion of Medicaid would cost North Carolina taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars through 2021,’ they said in a joint release.

Probably so. But not expanding Medicaid is going to cost us billions, much sooner. If it leaves a landscape strewn with closed, underfunded or understaffed hospitals, that will be the heaviest cost of all.”

Read the entire editorial by clicking here.

Lawmakers, advocates call for special session to expand Medicaid

October 28, 2013 at 1:56 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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Medicaid expansionPointing out that the state’s ongoing refusal to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act is harming hundreds of thousands of poor North Carolinians and sending millions of state taxpayer dollars to other states, a group of lawmakers and advocates gathered outside the state Legislative Building this morning to ask that Gov. Pat McCrory call a special session of the General Assembly to revisit the decision.

The event featured State House Democratic Leader, Rep. Larry Hall and State Senator Mike Woodard, as well as Adam Linker of the Justice Center’s Health Access Project and Raleigh physician and free clinic practitioner, Dr. Gary Greenberg (pictured at the podium).

Though highly critical of the Governor’s inaction thus far on the Medicaid issue, both Hall and Woodard expressed a measure of hope that McCrory’s recent rather ambiguous statements about the program Read More…

First it was cookies, now it’s turnip greens

October 23, 2013 at 3:50 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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Pat McCrory 2Art Pope 3In a rather amazing response to the bad P.R. they’ve been receiving for their toughest-in-the-nation policies toward the poor and unemployed over the last several months, Gov. McCrory and his budget director, chain store magnate Art Pope, issued a pair of press releases today in an attempt to show what caring souls they are.

Unfortunately for both men, both statements come off as almost comically pathetic in their failure to appreciate the magnitude of the problem confronting people in need.

The Governor’s statement was probably the funniest: he announced that:

“approximately 6,700 pounds of fresh turnip greens harvested at the state prison farm at Caledonia Correctional Institution are being delivered to the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina.”

Gee thanks, Guv! That ought to take care of that pesky hunger problem!

Pope, meanwhile, Read More…

New report: Medicaid expansion would save lives of children

October 22, 2013 at 2:14 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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A new report from by analyst Laila Bell at the group Action for Children NC entitled “Healthy Women, Healthy Babies,” puts the decision of the Governor and General Assembly not to expand Medicaid into pretty sharp relief. Its common sense conclusion: expanding Medicaid to cover hundreds of thousands of low-income North Carolinians as is made possible by the Affordable Care Act would, literally, save the lives of a lot of infants born to poor moms.

Here are the key findings:

  • Healthy infancy and childhood begin with healthy mothers; women’s health before, during and between pregnancies is a strong predictor of the survival and long?term health of their newborns.
  • Maternal risk factors associated with infant mortality can be prevented or effectively managed with appropriate preventive care.
  • In 2010, North Carolina’s infant mortality rate hit a record low, but has since increased by 6 percent over the past two years. Most of the increase occurred among African American babies.
  • North Carolina has the opportunity to counteract rising infant mortality rates and reduce racial disparities in birth outcomes through Medicaid expansion. Under the Affordable Care Act, an estimated 500,000 North Carolinians—including 178,000 low-income women of childbearing age—would gain access to health insurance coverage.

Read the entire report by clicking here.

Another place NC tax dollars are going

October 22, 2013 at 9:18 amCategory:Uncategorized

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Ohio: That’s the latest state led by a conservative Republican governor to realize the utter mathematical stupidity of saying “no” to a federally-funded Medicaid expansion for a huge chunk of its poorest citizens.  

This is from the folks at Think Progress:

“Ohio joined the list of states expanding Medicaid for Americans under 133 percent of the federal poverty line on Monday, after a special seven-member budgetary oversight panel made up of state lawmakers gave final approval to Gov. John Kasich’s (R) decision to grow the program via executive order….

Medicaid expansion, a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, is expected to cut Ohio’s uninsurance rate by over 60 percent and extend basic health benefits to 275,000 of the poorest Ohio residents.”

At some point, Gov. McCrory and the General Assembly are going to wake up and acknowledge the undeniable math of the matter as well. No matter how many musty old Austrian economists the state budget director and his hirelings in the right-wing “think” tanks dredge up, at some point, elected politicians are going to figure out that it’s beyond mad to send billions of tax dollars to the feds so that they can redirect them to health providers in other states without providing North Carolina its fair share. 

A half-million North Carolinians eagerly await the light bulb moment.