ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — In a press release yesterday, registered nurses with the National Nurses Organizing Committee-North Carolina, a chapter of National Nurses United, called out North Carolina lawmakers for “playing politics with patients’ health,” urging state politicians to heed Gov. Josh Stein’s call to pass legislation that would fully fund Medicaid.

While Medicaid provides health care to one in four North Carolina residents, according to an NC Medicaid report, the NNOC-NC declared that 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., in the release. “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.”

According to the committee, the consequences of inadequately-funded Medicaid services would be drastic for North Carolinians across the state.

“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,” the NNOC-NC wrote in the release.

“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.”

For more information about NC Medicaid, visit www.medicaid.ncdhhs.gov/about-nc-medicaid.