Editorial: Stop the phony excuses, expand Medicaid now

Friday, June 7, 2019 -- It is way past time to stop looking on the unemployed and the poor as burdens and freeloaders to be demonized. Of the many reasons for poverty, the myth that people choose it isn't one of them. There is no shortage of ambition, hard work, hopes and dreams, and love in low income families. All parents want their kids to be successful.

Posted 9:00 a.m. Jun 7, 2019 — Updated 1:51 p.m. Jun 7, 2019

CBC Editorial: Friday, June 7, 2019; Editorial #8429

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

Senate leader Phil Berger keeps offering up reasons not to do the right thing and expand Medicaid. He believes that poor people will make it their excuse to avoid getting a job.

Here’s what he said: “Of those folks that would remain eligible for Medicaid under an expansion, the bulk of those are healthy 18 to 50 year old individuals, that once if you were to cover them with Medicaid – if they did get a job and began making a certain amount of money, they would no longer be eligible for the program. So, basically the incentives of providing coverage for those folks is something that disincentives folks to go to work.”

Berger sees low income people as individuals of low character. They really don’t want to work and earn a living. They are lazy and take advantage of any assistance to get by, like food stamps, welfare and health insurance. They will bleed the rest of us dry. Besides, we all have the same opportunity. “Those people” just do not want to work to improve their situation. They probably made some bad decisions along the way. It is all their fault.

He’s wrong. It is way past time to stop looking on the unemployed and the poor as burdens and freeloaders to be demonized. Of the many reasons for poverty, the myth that people choose it isn’t one of them. There is no shortage of ambition, hard work, hopes and dreams, and love in low income families. All parents want their kids to be successful.

Phil Berger’s first rationalization blocking expansion contends the federal government’s commitment – paying 90 percent of the costs (and the state’s hospitals have agreed to pick up the rest) could end. “There is no guarantee this will continue in perpetuity.”

Well, there is no guarantee that ANY program will last forever. With that same logic, the state should end highway construction where the federal government picks up a major piece of the tab, or close Fort Bragg.

Even more so, Berger’s just out of step with the vast majority of North Carolinians. They favor expanding Medicaid to nearly 600,000 citizens. Sixty-eight percent of the state’s registered voters favored expansion, according to a Meredith College survey taken in February. Just 17 percent opposed it.

We think North Carolina legislative leadership’s reflexive disdain for former President Barack Obama and anything he advocated or accomplished has them turning the clock back to obliterate anything from that time – regardless of its merit.

Isn’t it time to get over that? We have already lost billions of dollars for our economy and tens-of-thousands of good jobs. Rural hospital are closing and thousands are going without treatment for chronic diseases – even dying.

Enough is enough. It is past time to put politics aside.

Expand Medicaid now.

BY THE NUMBERS: COST OF DENYING HEALTH INSURANCE IN N.C.

2014-2018 Jan.- May 2019 TOTAL Diabetics Without Medication* 119,228 11,270 130,498 Annual Mammograms Missed* 60,249 5,020 65,269 Deaths* 6,936 to 2,267 725 to 190 7,661 to 2,457 Federal Funding Lost** $11.9 billion $772.5 million $12.67 billion Jobs Not Created** 71,852 5,885 77,737 *Opting Out Of Medicaid Expansion: The Health And Financial Impacts, Health Affairs Blog

** The Economic and Employment Costs of Not Expanding Medicaid in N.C., Center for Health Policy Research, The George Washington University, Dec. 2014

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