NC Governor Promotes President's Universal Healthcare System

Bev Perdue and entourage of Health Leaders attended President's Town Hall meeting in Raleigh, NC

July 30, 2009

NC GOVERNOR NEWS -- Even though most North Carolina voters are against a government administered universal healthcare system. Yesterday, Governor Bev Perdue joined health leaders from across the state to attend President Barack Obama's health care forum at Broughton High School in Raleigh. Moreover, the governor invited representatives from the state's leading health care organizations, including hospitals, research institutions, advocates and minority groups, to attend the event with her.

Governor Perdue stated:

"I applaud the president for prioritizing health care and for working with Congress to bring about change. Here in North Carolina, one in five of our citizens does not have health insurance. We are living the problem, and we are all anxious for a solution.

"When I spoke to President Obama this morning, I told him I believe strongly that reform must take place at the federal level. We have innovative solutions to providing care in North Carolina, and we have excellent providers, but our finances are stretched to the limit. We must ensure that the financial burden of a new system cannot fall to the states. A national health care system must provide the right care, at the right time, at the right place but at a price that people, and states, can afford."

However, a recent Civitas poll shows North Carolina voters are overwhelmingly against a government administered healthcare system, with the 56% of North Carolina voters against higher taxation to pay for the implementation of the plan, or entrusting their health or family's health to a government run health insurance plan.

Additionally, the governor's estimate of one in five North Carolinians living without health insurance may be inflated. The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates the number of uninsured in North Carolina at 15.3% measured over a three-year period. Furthermore, a March 2009 study by North Carolina Institute of Medicine (NCIM) admits current data for the number of North Carolinians without health insurance is unavailable, but estimates using unemployment rates to calculate the growth in the percent of uninsured in North Carolina since 2007 to be 3.1%. However this method of calculation is flawed because it does not consider the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), which gives unemployed workers and their families who lose their health benefits the right to choose to continue group health benefits provided by their group health plan for limited periods of time under certain circumstances such as voluntary or involuntary job loss, reduction in the hours worked, transition between jobs, death, divorce, and other life events.

The NCIM study also states approximately 20% of all non elderly uninsured within North Carolina are children. Medicaid and NC Health Choice, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), cover children in families with incomes of up to 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines. Therefore, approximately three-in-five uninsured children in North Carolina (186,000 children) are currently eligible for, but are not enrolled in, these programs. The NCIM study further states that the main factor why these children are not enrolled in these healthcare programs is because their parents do not understand the program rules. While others are deterred from enrolling or re-enrolling because of the burdensome enrollment process.

Therefore, we find that once again government bureaucracy is the root of why three-in-five children are uninsured in government administered health care programs in North Carolina.

In conclusion, no one deputes that in a country as technically advanced as the United States that citizens should not be properly insured, but the controversy lies within the method in which those 15.3% uninsured individuals should receive health care services.