Medicaid expansion not dead, deViere says

March 16-- Mar. 16--Fayetteville's freshman state senator, Democrat Kirk deViere, got caught in a wave of Republican ridicule the past few days that claims he made a rookie mistake on Wednesday that killed efforts to expand the government's Medicaid health insurance program to a large group of lower-income people who lack health insurance.

DeViere disputes the mockery.

"Medicaid's not dead. Medicaid is not dead," he said.

A former staff attorney for the legislature agrees with deViere.

Medicaid expansion would bring government-paid health care to more than 600,000 low-income North Carolinians, the governor's proposed state budget says. These residents fall in a gap between the bottom tier of Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies and the current top tier of Medicaid assistance.

The Republicans who control the legislature have opposed Medicaid expansion for years. They have cited the expense and philosophical grounds about public assistance programs.

DeViere on Wednesday gave the Republicans a chance to vote on the idea. He attempted to amend Medicaid expansion to a small-business health insurance bill that was before the Senate that day.

There, say deViere's critics, is where he went wrong.

In a party-line vote, the Senate's Republicans voted to table deViere's Medicaid expansion amendment -- to remove it from consideration.

And technically, under the Senate's rules, the Medicaid expansion idea is no longer eligible to be considered again by the Senate until the next two-year legislative session starts in 2021.

Conservative Stephen B. Wiley of the Carolina Partnership for Reform is one of several on the political right who said deViere inflicted a fatal wound. He wrote that "a rush of poor judgement by an over eager first-term legislature" had effectively ended "any chance of Medicaid expansion coming to a vote in the Senate" again during this lawmaking session.

That's not so, deViere said on Friday.

"It is not a slip-up," deViere said. "It is a coordinated effort by Democrats."

DeViere said he advanced the Medicaid expansion amendment because he and his fellow Democrats in the Senate on Wednesday were trying to keep Medicaid expansion in a comprehensive conversation about health care with Republicans about who refuse to talk about it.

In the end, deViere said, Medicaid expansion won't pass as a separate bill. Instead it will be added to the 2019-21 state budget as the House and Senate leaders and the governor negotiate a compromise among themselves for the two-year spending plan, he said.

Gerry Cohen, who was a staff attorney for the legislature for many years, made similar comments this week to the Carolina Journal, a conservative news outlet operated by the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh.

But what about the Senate's internal rule against considering the idea again?

It's common, Cohen told Carolina Journal, for the final version of a state budget to have items that technically violate the internal rules of the House and Senate. The lawmakers allow the budget bills to pass regardless, he said.

Staff writer Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3512.

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