North Carolina’s poor are under attack. In case you missed it, in the last few weeks our Republican-led state legislature is determined to reduce the state’s debt by sacrificing the poor.
The legislature passed legislation to cut benefits to the unemployed; declined Medicaid expansion that would have provided health insurance to low income North Carolinians mostly via federal funds; and rejected a state-run health exchange.
The decision to decline Medicaid expansion is wrong.
According to an article by Duke University political science professor Michael Allen Gillespie Under the Affordable Care Act, the expansion would cover an additional 600,000 North Carolinians who have no insurance under the Medicaid program, according to the N.C. Institute of Medicine. The state currently pays 35 percent of the cost of Medicaid for its existing patients while the federal government pays the other 65 percent.
Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the costs of the expansion for the first three years and a decreasing percentage each year after.
The State’s Poor Are Under Attack (Commentary) was originally published on oldschool1053.com
