HCfANC’s week of action: 5/4-11/15: Write to the Governor!

The NC Justice Center’s Health Access Coalition is organizing its Medicaid Expansion Coalition partners to take responsibility for a week of sending letters to Governor McCrory urging him to be a leader in the fight for Medicaid Expansion. The focus is on the Governor, not the legislature, because the Medicaid Expansion initiative must come from the administration. The legislature has already passed a law declining to expand Medicaid, and it won’t reverse that decision unless the Governor steps up.

Our organization, Health Care for All NC has committed to target the week of May 4.

Here’s what you can do. The letter below is drafted by the Coalition for Health Care in North Carolina, a project of Occupy Health and Wellness NC. Please personalize the letter, put it on your own stationery, and mail it (do not email it) to the Governor using the inside address in the letter. Send (email) a copy to us (info@healthcareforallnc.org).

The more letters reaching the statehouse, the better, so share this with sympathetic friends. Although he has been procrastinating, our pro-business Governor is a likely supporter of Medicaid Expansion and might have done more by now were it not for his conflicts with the legislature (particularly the Senate). So give the Guv a boost and send him your letters. It might make a difference, and thanks!

Thanks for taking energetic steps to expand access to health care in North Carolina.

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May 4, 2015
Office of the Governor
20301 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, North Carolina 27699-0301
 
Dear Governor McCrory,
 
Despite some improvements implemented under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), medical care in our state remains inaccessible to many and woefully inefficient.

• According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 1.6 million nonelderly North Carolinians have no health insurance.
• A 2014 study by researchers at Harvard University and the City University of New York projects that between 455 and 1,145 North Carolinians who would be covered under Medicaid Expansion will die each year because they lack health insurance.
• Duke University Hospital estimates that the cost of treating uninsured patients at their hospital alone exceeded $40 million in 2012.
• Pungo Hospital in Belhaven, North Carolina, has already closed and other rural hospitals are on the brink of closing because of the cost of uncompensated care.

With a profound concern for the health and well-being of the people of North Carolina, I write this letter to urge the acceptance of Medicaid Expansion.  Here are some of the compelling reasons:

• According to a study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Medicaid Expansion would extend insurance coverage to 357,000 North Carolinians.
• The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services estimated that accepting Medicaid Expansion would save our state approximately $65 million over ten years.
• The private economic forecasting company Regional Economic Models, Inc., projects that expanding Medicaid would create more than 25,000 jobs in North Carolina by 2016.
• The Cone Health Foundation estimates that Medicaid Expansion would generate $21 billion in total business activity for North Carolina from 2016 to 2020.

Until North Carolina accepts Medicaid Expansion, people’s lives will remain at risk.  The people of North Carolina deserve to know that when they need medical help, it is available and affordable.  By this action I join a large segment of our state’s population in urging you to please do everything in your power to assure Medicaid Expansion for North Carolina.
 
With hope of health care for all,
 
Sincerely,