by Nomad
Without the Medicaid expansion, health care for the poor of North Carolina has become a real problem. Of course, you'd never know it by the looks of salaries paid to CEOs of non-profit healthcare organizations.
To put it bluntly, If you are poor in North Carolina, don't even think about getting sick.
The Tarheel State is one of 20 states that rejected Obamacare's optional Medicaid expansion. Governor Patrick Lloyd "Pat" McCrory and a Republican-majority legislature left healthcare coverage as it stood, covering some 1.9 million residents, around only a fifth of the state's population.
Surviving in the Gap
Not everybody was happy with the arrangement. Advocates of the expansion claimed that another 500,000 people might have been added to the rolls, including tens of thousands of childless nondisabled adults.
Not everybody was happy with the arrangement. Advocates of the expansion claimed that another 500,000 people might have been added to the rolls, including tens of thousands of childless nondisabled adults.
USNews reported last October that there was a good reason for this dissatisfaction. The states' Medicaid program is broken.
Bureaucratically antiquated and growing faster than state revenues, it has gone over budget in three of the past four years, and its taxpayer cost and total enrollment have both doubled over the past decade. Last year, it cost North Carolina taxpayers $15 billion, nearly a third of the budget and more than twice what the state spent in 2003.
At the end of 2015, Gov. McCrory signed into law a bill to reform North Carolina's overgrown and out of control Medicaid program.
However, this reform will take, by the official estimate, around four years to become fully implemented. Supporters claim that it will reduce existing spending by 2%, saving hundreds of millions every year.
How accurate that is is anybody's guess. But one thing is clear, until then, the uninsured poor in the state are going to have to live with things as they are.
