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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

More NC Workers See Medicaid Expansion as Racial Justice Issue

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Monday, July 20, 2020   

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Black Americans are more than twice as likely as whites to die of COVID-19, but even before the pandemic, racial health disparities too often cut short the lives of people of color.

North Carolina is one of a handful of states that has refused billions of federal dollars to cover Medicaid costs for a half-million additional low-income workers.

Darrion Smith is in the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, and a member of Black Workers for Justice. He said for years, workers of color have advocated for Medicaid expansion in the state - and the current public health crisis illustrates why.

"And it would have brought a whole lot more health coverage to people throughout this state," Smith said. "All these different things link up. You've got poverty wages; people can't get healthcare, so people can't get preventative maintenance so they won't get sick."

The North Carolina General Assembly passed Senate Bill 808, touted as a Medicaid "transformation," which was signed this month by Gov. Roy Cooper. It changes the way healthcare providers are paid, and backers have said this will make it easier for Medicaid patients to get some types of services.

For now, however, 500,000 North Carolinians who could have been eligible are still shut out.

Smith said for him, politicians' stance on universal healthcare and Medicaid expansion signal whether they are genuinely committed to racial justice. And he isn't happy with either major party's presidential front-runner.

"Joe Biden isn't even for universal healthcare, or Medicare for all," he said. "Even though people don't like Donald Trump, Joe Biden is just back to the old status quo anyway."

According to state data from 2018, Black infants and children die at higher rates than their white peers. Rates of obesity and heart disease also are higher among Black North Carolinians compared with whites.


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