rural hospitals

On her morning commute to work, Dr. Laura Ucik, a rural family physician in the northern Piedmont of North Carolina, thinks about the frustrating memories of patients who could have avoided serious illness and injury had they qualified for Medicaid years ago. One such patient with severe stomach pain couldn’t afford an ultrasound to identify whether or not they had gallstones.

Medicaid expansion is not just a moral imperative — it could provide a much-needed tonic for the fiscal ailments that many rural hospitals face in North Carolina. Legislative leaders’ refusal to expand Medicaid has deprived hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians of lifesaving medical care and has left rural hospitals dangling in the fiscal winds.