McCrory Statement: NC Should Not Expand Medicaid or Set up Exchange

As for the health exchanges, in his announcement Tuesday morning, McCrory said there had not been enough preparation in state government during the past year to build “necessary and reliable systems to implement a state exchange.”

Some details still need to clarified as to whether or not NC would need to return all of the money it has recieve from the federal government to set up an exhcange because some of that money was devoted to the state upgrading its IT capabilities for Mediciad registraion and fraud detection unrelated to the actual exchange itself.

In late 2011, Civitas wrote 10 reasons why NC should not establish a state-run insurance exchange, virtaully almost all of those points still hold.

In regards to Medicaid expansion, estimates say the expansion would flood our state’s already overloaded Medicaid system with another 500,000 enrollees and in a few years cost the state roughly $500 million in additional Medicaid funds per year. And make no mistake, Medicaid expansion is not about granting people access to medical care. Indeed, back in 2008 I looked at the state trends from 2001 to 2006, and showed that the number of Medicaid enrollees increased by 28%, while at the same time the number of physicians accepting Medicaid patients decreased by 23%. Since then, Medicaid enrollment has continued to skyrocket, while the number of doctors accepting Medicaid patients has likely continued to dwindle. Bottom line, Medicaid already is strained by too many patients chasing too few doctors; cramming half a million more patients into the system will only strain the system further. There simply are not enough medical care providers to see all of these Medicaid enrollees.

McCrory’s statement backs Senate Bill 4, which passed the Senate last week and is on the schedule to be discussed in