Republican lawmakers in the N.C. House of Representatives want to claw back all the money legislators have appropriated for the proposed children’s hospital planned by UNC Health and Duke Health, House Speaker Destin Hall says.
That includes $213.6 million set aside by lawmakers in 2023. House and Senate leaders have disagreed on whether to add to that appropriation in the 2025-27 budget.
“Duke and UNC have a lot of money,” Hall said Tuesday in remarks to reporters. “Our members are asking the question of why is the state sending this money to two entities that already have a ton of it for a project the state may not necessarily need.”
He stressed that the House GOP caucus isn’t convinced of the need.
“We have at least five children’s hospitals in this state,” he said. “We’ve got three or four really big ones. You’ve got Wake Forest [in Winston-Salem], you’ve got the one in Charlotte. You’ve got Duke, you’ve got one here in Wake County already.
The hospital issue figures in both the ongoing House-Senate budget impasse and a new, three-way deadlock on Medicaid spending.
The House’s draft spending plan included no additional money for the project; the Senate proposed sending it another $638.5 million.
Senate leader Phil Berger is one of the project’s leading champions. A site in Apex has been selected for the hospital.
In May, Hall said his caucus was “certainly not opposed” to the project but wanted more information about it. His comments Tuesday thus amounted to a considerable escalation.
“Obviously, if we felt like the children of this state would not get health care, we would act, but the fact is, they are getting health care,” he said. “You have a small number of children who have unique and very rare diseases that there might be one hospital in the world that would treat [them]. And this wouldn’t change that.”
Senate leaders, meanwhile, are insistent enough on the point that they’ve tied a proposal to bolster Medicaid reserves to the allotment of $103.5 million to the children’s hospital.
The chambers agree on how much to spend on the so-called Medicaid “rebase,” and Gov. Josh Stein’s administration has signaled that it’ll have to reduce Medicaid reimbursement rates on Oct. 1 without it.
But the Senate’s linkage of Medicaid with the children’s hospital means the necessary legislation to fund the rebase has stalled.
Hall’s stance puts him at odds with state Treasurer Brad Briner and many Triangle business leaders, who have expressed strong support for the new hospital. Plans call for as much as $2 billion to be spent on the hospital, with money raised from public and private sources.
