Old North News

The North Carolina General Assembly’s decision to postpone action on expanding Medicaid to 2023, has prompted those who support the bill to take steps to try to press the legislators to act early next year.

Not expanding Medicaid means more than half a million North Carolinians are being kept from getting better access to medical care.

“Failure to expand Medicaid is costing lives and $521 million a month,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in a tweet. “It’s time to get this done.”

With the legislative battle extending into 2023, entities such as the American Cancer Society are launching advertising campaigns, using money that could have been used to find cures for cancer, WRAL said in an editorial report.

“Cancer isn’t partisan, and neither is having access to affordable health care,” John Hoctor, managing government relations director at the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network, was quoted as saying in the editorial.

The editorial writers agreed, saying there is no excuse for another legislative session having come and gone without a deal to expand Medicaid.

The editorial called the fact that national legislative leaders have forced a ban on Medicaid expansion since 2014 nothing more than a “mean-spirited display of antipathy” toward former President Barack Obama.

North Carolina is one of just 11 states yet to expand Medicaid. With the federal government agreeing to absorb almost all the cost, North Carolina’s stalemate has left more than $40 billion in federal funding in Washington since 2014. Federal taxes North Carolinians have paid, meanwhile, have gone to help pay for Medicaid expansion in Arkansas, Louisiana, Utah, Indiana and most recently, South Dakota.

Not acting has translated to between 4,240 and 15,200 deaths of people who weren’t able to get lifesaving care; 110.458 women who haven’t been able to get mammograms; 236,500 diabetics who have gone without medication; and 118,000 jobs that would have been created with the infusion of federal funds.

The editorial criticizes lawmakers for coming up with myriad excuses for failing to reach a compromise, saying no reason justifies not doing the right thing.

“It is a shameful legacy to have needlessly let thousands die and hundreds of thousands suffer over partisan pridefulness,” the editorial said. It added that it hoped lawmakers would move the legislation through quickly at the start of the 2023 session in January.

“Waiting until next year is astonishingly wasteful, irresponsible and cruel, costing us lives and billions of dollars,” Cooper spokesperson Mary Scott Winstead told the Associated Press earlier this year when the delay was first confirmed.