Cooper States Desire to Defy State Law in His First Week of Office | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post, by Brian Balfour, was originally published in the Elections & Voting section of Civitas's online edition.

    Just a few days after his midnight swearing-in, new Governor Roy Cooper tells a public audience today that he wants to bypass state law and ask the feds to expand North Carolina's already over-crowded Medicaid program.

• Gov. Roy Cooper says he wants to expand Medicaid immediately, defying a state law.
• Talking to a group of business leaders at an economic forum on Wednesday morning, the Democratic governor said he would file an amendment by Friday asking the federal government to amend the state Medicaid plan.

    Medicaid expansion would impose millions in costs on NC taxpayers, hurt the state's economy, and condemn a projected half a million mostly able-bodied, single adults to a Medicaid program already strained to the max.

    While the feds would pick up most of the expansion costs in the near term, NC taxpayers would shoulder millions in additional costs. And if other states serve as any example, we should expect actual costs to far exceed projections. It would be hard to avoid tax hikes to pay for the exploding costs.

    Moreover, research shows that Medicaid expansion would discourage work, and one 2015 study estimates that Medicaid expansion would cost NC 94,000 jobs. And never mind the siren song that "drawing down" federal funds for Medicaid expansion will stimulate jobs in the healthcare sector, as that notion falls flat when considering the severe supply constraints of doctors and hospitals willing to accept new Medicaid patients.

    Finally, we need to recognize that coverage does not equal access to care. As I wrote two years ago:

• North Carolina's Medicaid program has added more than 600,000 people in the last dozen years. At the same time, the number of NC physicians treating Medicaid patients has fallen.
• Expansion, by some estimates, would add another 400,000 to 500,000 to the Medicaid rolls. That would mean a million new Medicaid enrollees since 2001 - chasing fewer doctors. And of those who do accept Medicaid patients, one-fourth of them are not accepting new Medicaid patients.
• This is not politics or ideology - this is simple math. Medicaid expansion in NC would not provide access to medical care to the new enrollees, it would simply give them a Medicaid card with little to no hope of actually seeing a doctor when they are sick.

    The bottom line: Medicaid expansion would mean higher taxes, fewer jobs and up to 500,000 North Carolinians (mostly single, able-bodied) packed into a subpar healthcare program with little access to care.