Healthcare Quiz – January

Click on an answer and see if you are correct!

1. Any health insurance plan sold in North Carolina must, by law, include coverage for marriage therapy, pastoral counselors and drug abuse treatment. Customers are not allowed to opt out of paying for this coverage.

   • True
   • False
   All states have a set of mandated services and providers that must be included in any health insurance plan sold within its boundaries (the exemption is larger companies that “self insure”).
   North Carolina has 50 such mandates, tied for 17th most in the nation.

2. North Carolina’s Medicaid program provides coverage for only basic medical services.

   • True
   • False
   The federal government requires state Medicaid programs to cover certain services, but states can also choose from a menu of 38 optional services. North Carolina covers all but 2 of these optional services. According to the Fiscal Research Division of North Carolina, 56 percent of Medicaid expenditures in 2004 were dedicated to optional services. Indeed, a 2001 report by The Lewin Group described North Carolina’s Medicaid program as a “Cadillac” system.

3. Nearly twice as many North Carolinians “strongly oppose” Obama’s healthcare overhaul than say they “strongly support” it.

   • True
   • False
   According to the August 2010 Civitas poll, 42% said they strongly oppose compared to 23% that replied they strongly support Obama’s "new healthcare reform."

4. North Carolina currently caps malpractice awards for non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits to $1 million.

   • True
   • False
   North Carolina has no cap on such damages. Twenty-four states have imposed a cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice suits. California was one of the first states in the nation to impose a cap on medical malpractice awards in 1975, and since then that state’s average medical malpractice insurance premiums have increased at a rate about 2/3 less than the national average.
   Source: http://www.nccivitas.org/public-policy-series/healthy-kids-healthy-families/medical-malpractice-reform/

5. State spending on North Carolina’s Medicaid program in FY 2006-7, the last budget year before the recession had an impact, was up a whopping 28% over Medicaid spending from just five years before.

   • True
   • False
   Medicaid spending actually increased by a third (33%) from FY 2001-2 to FY 2006-7.
   See the FY 2006-7 budget figures here, and the FY 2001-2 here.