Rose Hoban of NC Health News on a $30B budget heavy on policy, and what’s next for Medicaid

After months of delay, Republican legislative leaders pushed through a $30 billion state budget filled with new appropriations and policy in less than 48 hours. Since then, experts and observers have been trying to piece together and decipher the scores of new laws – many highly questionable and never seen before – that are now in the state statute books.

One budget provision, however, that came as no surprise was the much-delayed final approval of expanding the state’s Medicaid program – a change that will extend health insurance coverage to as many as 600,000 people. In order to understand the details of this long-overdue development (as well as numerous other changes to state healthcare law) NC Newsline sat down for an interview  with a veteran journalist who has chronicled these debates for decades, North Carolina Health News founder and editor, Rose Hoban.

In Part One of NC Newsline’s extended conversation with Hoban, we discussed the details of Medicaid expansion – the new and momentous change that will be coming to our state on December 1 as a result of the recent enactment of the budget.

In Part Two of our conversation, we delved into several other healthcare topics inserted in the budget bill – including a big and rather ill-defined new collaboration between UNC and ECU to create a new rural health initiative, plans to build a new children’s hospital, changes to laws and programs impacting mental health care, and some big new appropriations to a network of controversial nonprofits known as crisis pregnancy centers.