RALEIGH — Although policymakers sometimes portray increasing access and reducing cost as separate objectives for health care reform, the two are closely related. When North Carolinians lack immediate access to primary care or mental health services, they bear the cost either of waiting for an appointment or of traveling long distances to get the care they need.
According to the state’s department of health and human services, 82 of North Carolina’s 100 counties rate poorly in access in primary care. Most are exactly where you’d expect them to be, in our state’s most rural eastern and western areas.
Thinking about a lack of health care access as an additional cost helps clarify what might otherwise be muddy issues. For example, advocates of Medicaid expansion, Medicare for All and other expansive approaches to government finance of health care tend to conflate price and cost.
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