medicaid

Click here to view and here to listen to Joseph Coletti discussing this Spotlight report. RALEIGH – North Carolina could make health insurance more affordable for everyone by…

Health insurance should act like insurance, not a payment plan for regular medical needs. It should also be available for individuals to purchase in a deregulated market. A high-risk pool for health insurance, as in other insurance markets, would keep premiums affordable for the small percentage of those with significant care needs without raising costs for the entire market. The state of North Carolina should finance any high-risk pool entirely through the General Fund and existing taxes, rather than assessments on insurers or other hidden taxes. Money for a high-risk pool can come from Medicaid savings.

Economic growth has given the General Assembly $2.4 billion more to spend. Higher sales and income taxes have contributed to this surplus. The Senate adds $1.4 billion in new spending, and relies on nonrecurring revenues for $400 million in new recurring obligations. Drawing on the John Locke Foundation’s Freedom Budget 2005, this paper offers an alternative budget that would end the sales tax and income tax increases from 2001, eliminate Medicaid’s burden on counties, and keep spending growth to 4.3 percent – all within the limit of population growth and inflation.

RALEIGH – N.C. legislators should close the books on two “temporary” taxes, now that those taxes have helped generate a $2.4 billion state budget surplus. That’s a key finding in…

Gov. Mike Easley’s proposed $18.9 billion budget does not provide enough relief to taxpayers who made it possible. The governor could have returned the $1.1 billion in overcollections to taxpayers without jeopardizing future fiscal health. This would include ending the half-cent sales tax and 8.25 percent income tax rate set to expire in 2007, and providing a temporary quarter-cent sales tax refund. Removing the county burden for Medicaid would also ease the fiscal pressure local governments face to raise taxes to pay for schools and roads.

Gov. Mike Easley’s proposed state budget takes advantage of a $2 billion surplus to increase spending by $1.6 billion, according to a preliminary analysis by the John Locke Foundation.

Health care is again a top priority for most Americans. Health savings accounts offer promise and are growing in popularity among companies and individuals. Three states will soon begin consumer-directed Medicaid pilot programs. These are more realistic approaches than proposals by the NC Institute of Medicine and others to expand Medicaid or to force employers to provide health insurance. Individuals, not companies or the state, are best equipped to manage their own health care. Health care reform should start from this premise.

RALEIGH – An expansion of the state-federal Medicaid program is a prescription for more health care problems, a new John Locke Foundation Spotlight argues. Instead, consumers should manage their own…

RALEIGH — North Carolina is the only state in the nation that requires counties to pay a fixed percentage of Medicaid costs. The General Assembly’s own Blue Ribbon Commission on…

North Carolina is the only state in which counties pay a fixed percentage of Medicaid costs. Counties have no control over how they spend up to 15 percent of their general fund budget and 39 percent of their property tax revenues. Six counties spend more on Medicaid than on education. Program expansions and higher medical costs have pushed Medicaid’s share of county budgets up an average of 18 percent in five years. The General Assembly should act on the recommendation of its own Blue Ribbon Commission on Medicaid Reform to cap and reduce what counties must contribute to Medicaid.