Asked at a forum Wednesday night when the legislative session would end, Lee Lilley, Cooper’s director of legislative affairs, replied: “The session ends when we get Medicaid expansion.”…

Medicaid expansion would allow more low-income adults to qualify for health insurance, with the federal government picking up most of the cost. Democrats say that expansion would help 500,000 adults in North Carolina get health coverage. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that expansion would help 339,000 people in the state.

If those who truly care about the present and future wellbeing of 10 million North Carolinians were forced, however, to pick a single issue that will ultimately go the furthest toward determining the success or failure of this year’s legislative session, one clearly stands out: Medicaid and its long and desperately overdue expansion under the terms of the Affordable Care Act….
North Carolina has gone for half of a decade now in the national backwaters – stubbornly refusing to take action that the overwhelming majority of states, under political leaders from both major political parties, have taken. This inaction has, quite literally, cost thousands of human lives and tens of billions of dollars that could have been injected into the state’s economy.