Registered nurses with National Nurses Organizing Committee-North Carolina (NNOC-NC), an affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU), call on the North Carolina legislature to stop playing politics with patients’ health and follow Governor Josh Stein’s call to hold a special legislative session to pass legislation that would fully fund Medicaid.

Nurses, patients, and communities fought for and won Medicaid expansion in 2023, and now Medicaid provides health care to one in four North Carolinians. But North Carolina is hundreds of millions of dollars short of fully funding its Medicaid program because state legislators have failed to pass a budget bill to fully fund the state’s Medicaid program.

“North Carolinian lawmakers’ failure to fund Medicaid will have severe and devastating impacts on rural communities across the state, as well as communities still recovering from Hurricane Helene,” said Molly Zenker, RN at Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C. “Now is the moment for our elected officials to put aside their political infighting and do their job of protecting the people of North Carolina by funding health care services for our communities.”

Without full funding of Medicaid, thousands of North Carolinians will not receive crucial health care services, including low-income, disabled, and pregnant patients; seniors in nursing homes; and children. Countless patients have already lost access to crucial health care services across North Carolina.

These devastating funding shortfalls to North Carolina’s Medicaid program will soon be further compounded by the catastrophic slashing of federal Medicaid funding across the country, resulting from the implementation of the federal House Resolution 1.

National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States with more than 225,000 members nationwide. NNU affiliates include California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, DC Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association, Minnesota Nurses Association, and New York State Nurses Association.