One of life’s great cruelties is that being broke is actually really expensive.
Let’s say that you’re living paycheck to paycheck and your car starts making a funny noise, but it’s the end of the month and you know if you take it into the shop now then you won’t have enough in your account when rent comes due on the first. You know you really ought to get that looked at, but no matter how much you know you need it, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re in survival mode and you need to prioritize short term decisions. So you put it off for this month.
Except, what ultimately happens is that rent is always due on the first and it’s been going fine so far and you put it off every month. And then one day, that funny noise turns into having to replace your transmission or buy a new car. Because you couldn’t afford simple maintenance, when things finally go belly up you end up in a much worse place.
Right now, the State Health Plan is operating in basically the same way. The current Treasurer has confirmed that the Health Plan has a hundred million dollar hole in its budget—that’s one hell of a funny noise—and that as soon as 2026, the plan may not even be able to cover its basic operating expenses anymore.
A lot of that budget shortfall comes from the General Assembly’s unwillingness to invest in basic maintenance. Republican leaders in the legislature have whittled away all the wiggle room we had in our budget by slashing revenues, and now they’re turning their pockets inside out, gesturing at the lint and shrugging their shoulders in defeat about actually funding the Health Plan.
It’s a short-term survival mindset that might save pennies today… but this kind of neglect will cost the state (and by extension, taxpayers) a lot more in the long run.
We need a General Assembly that will fully fund the State Health Plan and invest in wellness programs and preventative care for beneficiaries that help keep costs down in the long run. And we need a Treasurer who will advocate for that.
Everyday people generally can’t just pull themselves up by their bootstraps (in fact, if you own a pair of boots, go try literally doing that sometime and you’ll see why that expression was originally supposed to refer to something completely impossible).
But a government can. A government has much more discretion about how it allocates its resources and how much revenue it takes in, and right now our government is making choices that are trapping North Carolina in a cycle of poverty—because it’s expensive to be broke, and we need a government that understands that and is willing to invest in its people now, not just when we reach a point of crisis.
And that can start by electing a Treasurer who will actually be an advocate for the State Health Plan and the nearly 750,000 North Carolinians who rely on it for care. I hope to be that Treasurer, and I hope I can count on your support to get there.
