August 20, 2020
The House Select Committee on COVID-19 Health Care Working Group met today to review policy and funding priorities for the upcoming legislative session that is scheduled to begin on September 2nd. The legislature plans to convene for several days in September, and is expected to return later in the fall once Congress passes another federal relief package.
The committee first received an update from legislative staff on expenses and remaining funds from the Coronavirus Relief Fund. The state received more than $3.5 billion in funding from the federal government, and has appropriated a little over $3 billion of those funds. A breakdown of how the Coronavirus Relief Funds have been allocated can be found here. Next, the committee heard from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services on how COVID-19 has affected children. The department gave an update on the percentage of children that have tested positive for COVID-19, increasing challenges for children facing food insecurity, and the potential effects of learning loss.
N.C. DHHS Secretary, Dr. Mandy Cohen, then gave an overview of the department’s COVID-19 budget priorities for the upcoming September session. Secretary Cohen’s priorities include increasing access to healthcare through Medicaid expansion, prevention efforts to combat COVID-19, protecting aging adults, support for underserved and rural communities, prioritizing early childhood services, supporting mental health services, and fighting the opioid epidemic during the pandemic. Lastly, the Health Care Working Group presented the legislature’s funding requests. The requests were divided up into several broad categories, including personal protective equipment (PPE), Medicaid, COVID-19 testing, hospitals, physicians, child care and education, behavioral health, and assisted living. The working group discussed what requests should be considered during the upcoming September session (tier 1 requests), and what could wait until later in the fall (tier 2 requests).
The Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI) received $15 million from the legislature in May (S.L. 2020-4) for the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, and has requested an additional $2 million in funding to design and develop a rapid, sensitive, and inexpensive test for COVID-19. Today, committee members stated that the request from DHVI would likely be supported as a tier 1 priority in September.