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For Immediate Release:
December 11, 2023
Contact:
Grace Hoge
[email protected]
ICYMI: North Carolina Expands Medicaid,
Makes Kansas One of Ten States Yet to Expand
KEY QUOTE: “Participating in the Medicaid expansion and another federal program that North Carolina hospitals entered into under the new law should bring $8 billion in federal funds into the state annually, according to state officials. The money should help reimburse rural hospitals that treat high numbers of uninsured people. It may also generate economic benefits through the health care system.”
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A decade after the federal government began offering expanded Medicaid coverage in states that opted to accept it, hundreds of thousands of adults in North Carolina are set to receive benefits, a development that boosters say will aid hospitals and local economies in addition to the long-term uninsured.
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Residents including Carrie McBane have been navigating the gap between earning too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford private insurance for years. She’s hopeful that expanded eligibility will revive the state’s working class, especially in rural communities like her small mountain town of Sylva, located 290 miles (467 kilometers) west of Raleigh.
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“It’s the worst feeling in the world, when you don’t know what’s happening with your body but you know something’s terribly wrong and you’ve gotten zero help through the medical industry,” McBane said. “And as you get sicker, the bills pile up.”
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Many of [McBane’s] neighbors work fast food or construction jobs that don’t cover health care, and they face stress and stigma whenever they have to visit a doctor, she explained. Much of western North Carolina exists in the Medicaid coverage gap, “and its citizens are absolutely left behind,” McBane said.
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North Carolina’s decision to opt into the expanded Medicaid program makes it the 40th state to do so. The District of Columbia also participates. Some states with Republican leaders have recently considered expansion after years of opposing it...
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