There are few situations in life that are clearly win-win. When you see one, you have to take advantage of it.
That’s why North Carolina should reverse course and expand Medicaid. When you have the chance to improve health care for hundreds of thousands of people and actually save money, you should jump on it.
In a recent News & Observer editorial, the paper called the decision not to expand Medicaid “wildly irresponsible and hugely expensive.” That’s precisely correct, and let’s explore the first part of the statement a bit more.
Turning down Medicaid expansion turns down $50 billion in federal funding and prevents roughly 400,000 of our neighbors from getting covered. That makes expanding Medicaid an obvious choice.
But also consider that preventative care saves money over the long run. Insuring people means they get to go to the doctor, which means we pay less to prevent disease. This leads to lower costs for taxpayers and better lives for our people. An excerpt from the N&O piece:
Community Care said in a news release: “The medical costs for low-birth-weight babies average $49,000 in a baby’s first year of life, or more than 10 times more than babies born without complications. A low birth weight also increases a child’s risk for long-term medical and developmental complications and the likelihood of incurring additional expenses for social services and educational needs in later years.”
Kate Berrien, manager of Community Care’s pregnancy project, said North Carolina now leads the South in having the fewest births before 39 weeks. That’s a lot of savings and a vast increase in the quality of life for many children born to low-income mothers. And it’s an achievement attributable to innovations in community-level care that were developed in North Carolina and are being adopted across the nation.
It’s a win-win situation. Tom Wroth, CCNC’s chief medical officer, said, “We’ve been able to align improving clinical quality with lower cost.”
Read that last paragraph again. Improving quality care with lower cost is a win-win. So is expanding Medicaid.
Creative Commons Attribution