Photo: Tim Barnwell
Legislative News by Nelda Holder –
I’m old enough to have seen things come and go.
Unfortunately, in that context, I am currently lamenting the exit from our North Carolina stage of simple good sense in the form of progressive legislation.
Yes, I’m old enough to remember when “progress” was not an expletive and moving forward did not mean taking five steps back. And so it is that my skepticism meter has been rising sharply this legislative session.
Hark! The news-herald angels are singing the praises of the Republican legislative leadership as they (finally) move toward instituting full Medicaid for our residents. House Speaker Tim Moore (R) and Senate President Pro Temp Phil Berger (R) announced a “deal” on Thursday, March 2, after House Bill 76 (Access to Healthcare Options) passed in the House and moved to the Senate.
Never mind that for a full decade since assuming the legislative majority, this party has unreasonably denied this important – and sometimes lifesaving — assistance to hundreds of thousands of uninsured people in this state.
Here are some of the laudatory headlines:
And here’s an opinion piece that fillets the subject: “The GOP’s epic defeat on health care is laid bare in North Carolina” (The Washington Post, May 3). It offers a cogent rundown on the 2014 Affordable Care Act’s healthcare expansion opportunity during the Obama administration, and how it came to be that about two dozen states, GOP-run, decided to refuse this help extended to their people. These numbers have dwindled in the years since as one-by-one, Republican-led states have admitted the wisdom of the no- or low-cost medical care expansion program, and ACA repeal energy has dwindled. North Carolina’s acceptance into the program would leave only 10 states off the list of participants.
The cogent editorial in the March 5 Winston-Salem Journal) offers this perspective on what the state of North Carolina itself has to…
Read the full article here
