CHARLOTTE, N.C. — While state lawmakers continue to hammer out details of this year's budget, health insurance coverage for hundreds of thousands of people hangs in the balance.
"It's tragic, that we're willing to run it up to the line here and risk hundreds of thousands of people of losing access to care and not getting access to care," Kody Kinsley, NC Secretary of Health and Human Services, said on WCNC's Flashpoint.
In March, a bipartisan group of lawmakers passed Medicaid expansion, capping a decade of debate over whether the closely politically divided state should accept the federal government's coverage for hundreds of thousands of low-income adults.
There are now only 10 states in the U.S. that haven't adopted the expansion.
But lawmakers tied the expansion to the state budget, which is still being debated. House Speaker Tim Moore indicated the debate will extend into September. Kinsley hoped to launch the expansion on Oct. 1, but said he'd need authority to start the process by Sept. 1. More delays, he argued, would push expansion back to December at the earliest.
"I think it's a real shame that lawmakers are willing to forego hundreds of millions of dollars of federal resources coming in North Carolina," Kinsely said.
Barring imminent agreement on the budget, Kinsley is encouraging lawmakers to "decouple" the Medicaid expansion from the budget, passing them during separate votes.
Contact Ben Thompson at bthompson@wcnc.com and follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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