Medicaid ‘home health’ spending needs a closer look

North Carolina’s governor and General Assembly are actively debating what final budget numbers should be for the next two years in the state.

…

According to Joseph Harris, fiscal analyst at the John Locke Foundation, “From FY 2021 to FY 2025, total Medicaid expenditures in North Carolina increased from $18.14 billion to $35.77 billion, or an incredible 97.2 percent.”

Because the federal government pledged to foot most of this bill, North Carolina agreed to expand this already-massive program to hundreds of thousands of working-age, able-bodied people. More than 3 million North Carolinians are now covered by Medicaid in a state of around 11 million.

In recent days, a massive $319 million “Medicaid rebase,” which is an adjustment to cover unforeseen cost increases, was signed into law. To give you an idea of the scale of this “adjustment,” consider how controversial the state spending $500 million on NC Innovation has been and how much debate has surrounded where to send this huge sum of money when it’s reclaimed.

Read the full story here.