Myron B. Pitts: Ellmers drops by to talk Medicaid (non-) expansion, Trump and other issues

Oct. 5--Former U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers dropped by the offices of fayobserver.com and the newspaper last Tuesday to talk to some people in our newsroom.

She was in town for the Rev. Franklin Graham's rally.

Ellmers is running for North Carolina lieutenant governor. But she said she was going to the rally as an attendee, and she did not plan on handing out campaign materials.

In her conversation with reporters and editors, the former nurse and Dunn resident had plenty to say about health care. She even wants to create a new health-care related job for the lieutenant governor, should she win.

She made one thing clear, however: If expanding Medicaid is your thing, she's not on board with that. At all.

"There are multiple reasons," she says. "No. 1, it actually can be detrimental to those who are receiving Medicaid services now -- those children, those individual adults who are disabled, those individuals who relay on Medicaid services."

She believes it will spread the money too thin.

She is skeptical of the idea that the federal government would bear 90 percent of the costs of expansion, with the state picking up 10 percent. She said she does not believe the federal government will uphold its end of the bargain in the long-term, and the state will be left holding the bag.

"It's just simply not sustainable," she says.

She believes solutions should come from giving patients better access to affordable care in the private sector. She believes with a boom economy, which she puts squarely at the feet of Donald Trump, the state has an opportunity to expand care without increasing government dependence.

She said she'd support Medicaid expansion only as a "last resort."

Her stance puts her directly at odds with Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is seeking re-election in 2020 and supports expansion. He is currently in a budget stalemate with the Republican-majority General Assembly over the issue.

The health care job for lieutenant governor that Ellmers wants to create would rely on the governor approving the job or the General Assembly. She is asked if there is hope she would get the job if Democrats are in charge.

She says the state constitution gives her latitude to pursue special duties. She said she would position it as a mandate.

"A mandate is a mandate," she says. "I will work with whoever's in office."

In reality however, it would be unlikely in extreme a Democratic governor or legislators would put her in charge of the state's health care portfolio with her stance on Medicaid expansion. She would need for Republicans to win out.

I asked Ellmers if there is any solution she is proposing that would insure as many North Carolinians as quickly as a federal expansion of Medicaid. Studies have shown more than 600,000 residents could be eligible for care with expansion.

"My fix, my approach would obviously take a longer period of time," she said. "What I will say though if individuals are in need of health care, they can go to the emergency room and receive care. They can go to community health centers. I"m a big believer in community health centers. They take care of our low-income, the indigent population, and they are incredibly efficient at what they do."

Ellmers served in Congress from 2011 to 2017, elected in the 2010 wave that saw Republicans take back the House from Democrats when Barack Obama was president. In 2016, she lost in a GOP primary to George Holding. Some thought she was not far enough to the right or else not sufficiently in lock-step with her party's agenda.

But she would pass anyone's Trump loyalty test. She believes he's doing a fine job. She believes the Democrats' impeachment inquiry in the U.S. House is ginned up and that eventually, it will wind up hurting Democrat Joe Biden, the former vice president and candidate for president.

Trump appointed her as a regional director based in Atlanta for the Dept. of Health and Human Services. While there, she put a lot of focus on rural health care, where there are big problems of income and access, she says.

But she notes her support for Trump came well before that.

She says: "I was the first female member of Congress to endorse President Trump."

Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be reached at [email protected] or 910-486-3559.

___

(c)2019 The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.)

Visit The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.) at www.fayobserver.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.