With officials from the state Department of Health and Human Services wrapping up work on an overhaul of the state’s Medicaid program this week, lawmakers, physicians and patient advocates gathered at the General Assembly Wednesday to push for Medicaid expansion to be included in the state’s reform plan.With officials from the state Department of Health and Human Services wrapping up …

Roughly 8 percent of the 2.9 million Americans who exist in the “Medicaid gap” are in North Carolina, according to health advocates who planned to raise the issue at the General Assembly on Wednesday. Read more

Elizabeth City’s poor residents need expanded access to Medicaid, City Council agreed last week. In a unanimous vote, council approved a resolution Monday calling for Gov. Pat McCrory and state lawmakers to accept the expansion, a provision of the federal Affordable Care Act that they’ve rejected since 2013. Read more

State Rep. John Ager, D-Buncombe, introduced a bill this week to expand the state’s Medicaid program, but it appears the bill is more of a means to provoke conversation about the idea than something likely to become law in 2016. Read more

A bill submitted Tuesday in the N.C. House would expand the state Medicaid program to cover an additional 500,000 North Carolinians. However, because key Republican legislative leaders have said expanding the program is a non-starter, the chances are slim that the bill will emerge from a House committee during this short session. Read more

Pasquotank County commissioners narrowly backed a proposal Monday to ask Gov. Pat McCrory and the General Assembly to support the expansion of Medicaid in North Carolina. Read more

Ever since she was a child, Leslie Boyd has been passionate about social justice issues, from the civil rights movement to the women’s movement and beyond. As a reporter, she covered public policy throughout her career. Those years of activism came full circle in a very personal way when her son Mike — who was uninsured because of a pre-existing condition …

Kudos for the April 23 news article “N.C.’s aging, death row inmates are dying of natural causes.” The article pointed out that slightly fewer than half of the 152 death row inmates are 50 or older and the oldest is 83. Any inmate deserves basic health care services, even death row inmates. Read more

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that each state had the right to accept or reject Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, I was 100 percent certain that North Carolina could not possibly be so stupid as to reject billions of dollars in federal funding to provided much needed medical care for poor citizens of N.C. What made it …

The state Department of Health and Human Services holds its final Medicaid reform hearing – and hears plenty from pediatricians. Read more