(The Center Square) – He was going to Cincinnati before he arrived in Raleigh to represent the Wilmington area.
Republican state Sen. Mike Lee knows what rural health care looks like in North Carolina. And he knows what it looks like at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, where he’s taken his child the last 15 or 16 years.
“If you would like to know whether a children’s hospital is necessary in North Carolina, come find me after this meeting,” Lee told colleagues in the Appropriations Base Budget Committee on Monday at the state Senate.
While Lee represents a big metropolitan area on the coast, his county neighbors are without any – Brunswick to the west, Pender to the north, and just beyond them Columbus, Bladen, Sampson and Duplin.
The panel passed the Healthcare Investment Act, known also as House Bill 562. Later in the afternoon, the full Senate gave passage.
The House of Representatives, however, is not expected to take up the bill. Its choice is for a Medicaid only proposal.
Republicans say the proposal stops “unprecedented rate cuts” by the state Health Department. Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, called first-term Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s moves politically motivated.
“If the department and the governor expect the General Assembly to continue to pump millions of dollars into the program, we need them to make every effort to find savings and evaluate its performance,” said Sen. Brent Jackson, R-Sampson, chairman of the Committee on Appropriations.
The legislation is reworked from its March filing, providing funding of $90 million for Medicaid in addition to an already recurring $690 million. There will be $34 million saved from elimination of vacant positions at the state Department of Health and Human Services.
Administration costs are aided by appropriation of $76.6 million, $42.2 million of which his recurring. The state auditor’s office, led by first-term Republican Dave Boliek, will get $1 million for use in determining Medicaid eligibility redetermination on the local level.
The bill language establishes a freestanding children’s hospital in funding the North Carolina Children’s Hospital and NC Cares. The Senate and House of Representatives in 2023 approved three years of funding, and this legislation gets the final $103.5 million of about $320 million for the hospital. The NC Care projects get $105 million to finish a $420 million commitment.
“It’s incredibly important we as a General Assembly live up to what we told the public about rural health care in North Carolina,” Lee said. “In 2023, we committed to spend money for the benefit of our citizens all across the state, not just in our major metropolitan areas, through the NC Cares program.”
Money for each project is a temporary savings reserve for now.
