North Carolina is the 40th state to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, following other recent expansions in Missouri, Oklahoma and South Dakota.
Expanding Medicaid provides insurance to people who make too much money to qualify for traditional Medicaid, but too little to qualify for federal subsidies for plans in the ACA exchanges.
Red states — traditionally leery of expanding government-funded programs — have become increasingly open to considering expansion a decade after the government gave them the option to extend Medicaid insurance to a larger share of their low-income populations.
