While voters across North Carolina were marking primary election ballots on Super Tuesday, including selecting candidates for governor, the man currently holding the state’s top job took a trip to Haywood County.
Gov. Roy Cooper along with N.C. Health and Human Services Secretary Kody Kinsley stopped by a Medicaid expansion training event at Lake Junaluska.
“The day North Carolina expanded Medicaid was one of my best days as governor,'” Cooper told a room filled with social workers, health care navigators and patient advocates.
An estimated 600,000 North Carolinians became eligible for health insurance when the Medicaid expansion launched on Dec. 1.
Cooper said more than 384,000 newly-eligible North Carolinians have enrolled in benefits.
Kinsley echoed the enthusiasm. “The data show that people are not only getting covered, they're getting care — hundreds of thousands of prescriptions already filled, millions of dollars in dental claims,” he said.
When asked about concerns felt in rural areas like Western North Carolina that there won’t be enough health care providers to accommodate the influx of new patients, Kinsley acknowledged the challenge.
“It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem,” he told BPR. “People didn't have health insurance for so long, leading many providers to close. Now, with Medicaid expansion, we're seeing efforts to reopen and expand, particularly in community health centers.”
“We're starting to hear stories from community health centers about the positive impact,” Kinsley continued. “But there is more that we need to do. We've taken steps to increase reimbursement rates in areas such as behavioral health, dental specialty care and primary care, but there's still work ahead.”
He pointed to the Healthy Opportunities pilot program, now in 33 counties across the state including 18 in WNC. The program directs Medicaid funding towards non-medical interventions to help high-need Medicaid enrollees.
“We recognize that the four key drivers of health —access to nutritious food, transportation, safety, and employment — often occur outside the doctor's office,” Kinsley said.
“Waiting for people to get sick is not an option; we must invest in keeping them healthy and intervene proactively. That's the potential of Medicaid.”
