NORTH CAROLINA: Major reversal: State Senate votes to expand Medicaid

NORTH CAROLINA: AFTER YEARS OF THE GOP DENYING HEALTH CARE FOR THE UNINSURED, THE GOP FINALLY ACTED! 

PLEASE SUPPORT JEFF JACKSON TO SPEAK UP FOR NORTH CAROLINA! 

Friends, Our state Senate — in a major reversal after years of resistance by GOP leadership — just voted to expand Medicaid. This is big for the state. It's also the biggest policy reversal I've seen in my eight years here. Last night’s floor session was simply remarkable. The speeches we heard from the GOP were full-on championing the cause. It was a long line of GOP Senators explaining why Medicaid expansion is a "slam dunk." Honestly, after a decade of opposition to precisely the same policy, it was a bit surreal. This is big — for patients, families, and rural hospitals. The basic problem is that we have about 600,000 people who earn too much to be eligible for Medicaid but not enough to be eligible for the Affordable Care Act. So there's a gap of working, low-income folks who are uninsured. The ACA knew this would be an issue, so part of it involved expanding Medicaid to cover folks in that gap, but the Supreme Court struck that down and said states could opt out of receiving those funds if they wanted to. It never made sense for states to do that because the federal government had agreed to pay at least 90% of the cost of the expansion (and in NC, hospitals agreed to pay the other 10%), but it got swept up in generic Obamacare resistance politics so lots of GOP-led state legislatures turned the money down. Like ours. That was almost a decade ago, and it's been a big fight ever since. It’s probably been the second highest-profile political battle in North Carolina for the last several elections. Now we have a complete and total reversal by GOP leadership in the state Senate. As we heard from their speeches last night, if it passes the state House, this will expand coverage to roughly 600,000 people, bring billions of dollars into our state each year, will help keep rural hospitals afloat, and will create thousands of new jobs. And it “makes good fiscal sense” because the federal government will pay 90% and hospitals pay 10%. It was like they grabbed all our talking points and read them out loud. Sen. Berger, GOP Senate leader, last night on the senate floor: "This is the right thing to do and it's not even close." "State taxpayers will not be burdened by this bill." "I urge your support for the bill." As I said, a total reversal. Personally, I think they’ve wanted to do this for years and this year they decided that we’ve finally reached enough distance from Obamacare’s passage that they feel comfortable supporting it without it becoming a lethal issue in their primaries. This isn’t about them looking for a win in the upcoming general — it’s about their level of comfort with their own primaries. Now it needs to pass the state House. Their GOP leadership has made some firm statements against passing it, which is deeply strange because they were basically for it until about a year ago. Conventional wisdom had been that Senate leadership was the roadblock and House leadership wanted expansion, but now that's switched. For their part, Senate leadership is saying they're going to make this a major priority for session this year, which just started yesterday and will run another 2/3/4 months. But wait, that wasn’t the whole day. Immediately after we passed Medicaid expansion, GOP leadership brought NC’s version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill to a vote. The purpose is to inject our state back into the culture war over LGBTQ rights and bring another wedge into this election cycle. This is not about solving a policy problem — it’s about finding another vehicle for outrage that dovetails with their national media apparatus. I voted against it and when Gov. Cooper vetoes it, I’ll vote to sustain his veto. And now, in about ten minutes, I’m headed back to the Senate floor to vote in favor of medical marijuana, which has been a long time coming but faces an uncertain fate in the state House. I wrote more about that here, if you’re interested. So there’s a lot going on. Some good, some bad. I’ll keep you posted, but in the meantime I would appreciate your support. I’m off the campaign trail for a bit while we’re starting back in Raleigh, and that means I could really use your help to keep us on track with our fundraising. If you could chip in a little to do that, I’d really appreciate it. Sen. Jeff Jackson DONATE

PAID FOR BY JEFF JACKSON FOR CONGRESS Jeff Jackson for Congress P.O. Box 470882 Charlotte, NC 28226 United States WWW.JEFFJACKSONNC.COM | INFO@JEFFJACKSONNC.COM