Health care is a frequent flash point in our politics. Thousands of North Carolinians have protested this year in support of protecting civil rights and social safety nets, including Medicare and Medicaid. Yet, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in July is expected to cause about 12 million Americans to lose their health insurance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024 led to an outpour of frustration with how our patchwork, profit-driven system treats us. Despite this, the N.C. General Assembly is proposing a new one-in, one-out approach for health insurance rules that could affect about half of North Carolinians.<\/p>\n
Senate Bill 24, titled “Govt Mandates Increase Healthcare Costs,” passed by a 30-15 margin in February, making the “crossover” deadline for what may be considered during this legislative session. It is supported by the N.C. Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business to help small businesses “continue providing health benefits…by limiting costly new mandates.”<\/p>\n
Its proponents argue that North Carolina is the most expensive state for health care and that S.B. 24 will help cut costs. It seems just as \u2014 if not more \u2014 likely, however, that rules will be slower to adapt to innovative treatments coming on the market, putting higher out-of-pocket costs on patients or making it harder to reform the system to be more cost-effective.<\/p>\n
The state currently has 58 required services, which apply to many employer plans, the Affordable Care Act Marketplace and State Health Plan. S.B. 24 would force any new coverage requirement to be accompanied by the repeal of an existing one with equal or greater costs, unless it’s expected to save money on its own. It also requires the state to fully fund the cost of any new requirements.<\/p>\n
Using coded terms like “mandates” is meant to cause an emotional response, but we need smarter policy than simply capping the number of rules at today’s level. Capping rules also doesn’t address the sources of high health care costs in North Carolina, such as delaying Medicaid expansion or the rise of mega-hospitals with regional monopolies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some state lawmakers are claiming that overregulation is driving high health insurance costs, but that doesn’t fit with the data. The right-leaning, Koch-supported Mercatus Center at George Mason University puts North Carolina in the middle to lower half when it comes to regulation. We ranked 29th out of 50 in total regulations and 32nd out of 44 in health care regulations in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The benefits and value that new treatments offer should be what determines coverage, not an arbitrary cap. Requiring one benefit be stripped just to add a new one doesn’t make sense. It also isn’t in the spirit of biomedical innovation: a key driver of the North Carolina economy. Health care does cost too much and it isn’t because of regulation\u00a0\u2014 it’s the prices. We can, and should, expect lawmakers to consider the benefits and costs of future innovation, rather than passing laws to avoid making the hard choices.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Paul Shafer, associate professor and co-director of the Medicaid Policy Lab at the Boston University School of Public Health, and Monica Aswani, assistant professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Health Professions. Both are alumni of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Health care is a frequent flash point in our politics. Thousands of North Carolinians have protested this year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-175708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}