Last week, JLF’s Becki Gray made her regular appearance on North Carolina Public Radio WUNC with host Jeff Tiberii. Becki joined Rob Schofield from the N.C. Justice Center.
In the episode, Tiberii asked his guests about the governor’s veto of the mini-budget that would have funded the transition of North Carolina’s Medicaid system to managed care. Schofield shared his hesitations about managed care in general, but Becki Gray commented that – regardless of how anyone feels about it – the managed care bill is now law. The question is when and how it will transition. Gray stated:
[Managed care] has already been decided… Whether it is successful or not in large part depends on how it is implemented. And that is what we are talking about now – this transition was ready to take place. The original plan was to have the funding in place when the budget passed in June. We know that didn’t happen, but the plan was to phase this in over several months so that easing into it could be as seamless as possible…
What this [veto] does is it delays that change over to managed care indefinitely. We don’t know when that’s going to take place.
The group also discussed the governor’s dealing with the Atlantic Coast Pipeline “mitigation fund” and legislative redistricting.
Listen to the full podcast here. Follow Becki Gray on twitter: @beckigray.
