© 2024 254 North Front Street, Suite 300, Wilmington, NC 28401 | 910.343.1640
News Classical 91.3 Wilmington 92.7 Wilmington 96.7 Southport
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
CAPE FEAR MEMORIAL BRIDGE CLOSURE: UPDATES, RESOURCES, AND CONTEXT

Rep. Ted Davis (R-New Hanover) Wants to Fix Current Medicaid System, Not Expand the Program

ncleg.net

Republican Representative Ted Davis is unchallenged in his bid for a third term in North Carolina’s House District 19, which encompasses the southern half of New Hanover County.  Davis wants to fix the current Medicaid system before the state expands the program. 

In 2013, Representative Ted Davis voted for a bill banning Medicaid expansion.  That bill passed, and North Carolina is still one of 19 states that has not expanded the health care program.  Davis says he’s always willing to reconsider his decisions in the legislature, but Medicaid has cost the state money in the past:

“One of the reasons that I know that I did not support the expansion originally was, as I said, my first term up there, we had to come up with five hundred million dollars to make up a shortfall.  I mean, that’s a humongous amount of money that could have been spent for other things.  So my point being, why would I want to support something to expand a system that was losing and costing the tax payers so much money?”

For the states that chose to expand Medicaid, the federal government fully funded the program for the first three years, starting in 2014.  That support would have phased down to 90% by 2020.  Representative Davis says he did not trust that support to adequately continue into the future.