Issue Position: Health Care

Issue Position

Every North Carolinian Deserves Access to Health Care

Every North Carolinian, as an American, has a right to affordable, basic health care.

No resident of this great state should have to choose between bankruptcy or treatment for disease or injury, or between food or needed medication.

MEDICAID EXPANSION

The General Assembly should immediately extend federally-paid for Medicaid benefits to the half-million North Carolina residents whose income is above the Medicaid poverty level, but not high enough to qualify for subsidies under the federal Affordable Care Act.

Because North Carolina has turned down Medicaid expansion, billions of federal tax dollars generated in this state, instead of coming back here, are going to other red, blue and purple states that have extended the coverage to their residents.

The North Carolina Institute of Medicine, an agency chartered by the General Assembly to provide recommendations on health policy, has determined that Medicaid expansion will not cost the state money. Rather, it will result in millions of dollars of extra tax revenues and create between 18,000 and 25,000 much needed jobs over its first eight years.

Because North Carolina refused to extend Medicaid coverage, major medical centers and small rural hospitals avross the state have been forced to cut thousands of professional jobs and the General Assembly is condemning an estimated 2500 residents per year to preventable premature death. Extending Medicaid is both the right thing to do for our neighbors and the fiscally responsible thing to do for the state.

If the General Assembly has not already done so, I will make it my priority to sponsor or support legislation enacting Medicaid expansion provided for by the federal Affordable Care Act.

ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE SERVICES AND INFORMATION

All persons should have confidential and timely access to reproductive health care information and services in order to facilitate responsible family planning, to prevent unwanted pregnancies, to prevent and treat sexually transmitted diseases, to deal with mental health issues, and to deal with substance abuse issues.

The state has a duty under the United States Constitution to not interfere with nor undermine effective access of the state's residents to such services and information, and I will vigorously oppose any attempts to do so.

PROTECTION OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE FOOD CHAIN

Closely related to health care is the protection of our land, drinking and irrigation water, and air from pollution with substances affecting public health. Air, water and dirt are essential to life, not only of ourselves but to our progeny.

The state has a responsibility to implement laws and regulations that require entities (from governments to corporations to entrepreneurs to farmers) that implement processes affecting our natural and food chain resources to show that such processes will not harm the public or their neighbors.

The state must require clean-up of existing pollution sources and impose strict liability on polluters for clean-up and any harm caused.

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