Alabama Hospital Association pushes for Medicaid expansion

The Alabama Hospital Association launched a campaign this week to push for expansion of the state's Medicaid program. Politicians in the Deep South have often opposed expansion, but the Alabama Hospital Association is urging citizens and policy makers to think of expansion as they would any other economic development investment, arguing it would benefit communities and the entire state health care system in addition to the estimated three hundred thousand people who would gain health care coverage, add thirty thousand jobs, and twenty eight billion to the economy. The Alabama Public Radio news team spent eleven months and twenty two hundred miles on the road investigating rural health. This effort will be honored next month with the national Edward R. Murrow Award in New York City. Click on apr.org’s homepage to hear this coverage again.