RALEIGH — North Carolina House Republicans filed a Medicaid expansion bill in the state House Wednesday, February 8, 2023. If it is successful it would extend healthcare to hundreds of thousands of people in the state considered the working poor. It is a cause state Democrats have pushed for years and remained stalled when legislators went home last year.
North Carolina is one of a very few states that have not expanded Medicaid. Many of the people who would be affected work in jobs that do not offer health care benefits. They make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, yet cannot afford to purchase it.
If that state expands healthcare, the federal government will pay North Carolina $1.8 billion.
The North Carolina Medical Society is following this legislation closely and we will talk about it in-depth in our next Political Pulse.