The year ahead: North Carolina state Rep. Deb Butler

This essay is one of a series written by Triangle leaders and experts about their visions for a new decade.

My fervent hope for this New Year and the dawning of a new decade is different than any other year of my life. I would never have imagined that my greatest wish would be for the return of our civil society. A society where we all recommit to intellectual integrity. One where we agree on the facts even when we don’t like them. One where leaders search their souls and in so doing are reminded that their allegiance mustn’t be to themselves, rather to their friends and their neighbors who are trusting them with their futures. Absent that, I’m not sure how we debate our issues or negotiate compromises to some very, very tough issues like climate change, free and fair elections, and health care.

The single most significant accomplishment that our legislature could achieve by year’s end would be to agree to extend health care to over 600,000 of North Carolina’s working poor. Many of our neighboring Southern states have done so despite rancorous political divides of their own because they understand that doing otherwise is immoral. In North Carolina, people are literally dying in the coverage gap. They are rationing insulin, taking medicines less frequently than prescribed, and suffering unnecessarily because they cannot access adequate mental health care. Expanding Medicaid now will create thousands of jobs, will benefit our foundering rural hospitals, and will save our neighbors lives. We simply must find the courage to put politics aside on this issue. Let’s start rebuilding that civil society, shall we?

Rep. Deb Butler is a Wilmington Democrat and an attorney.

This story was originally published December 26, 2019 at 5:00 AM with the headline "The year ahead: North Carolina state Rep. Deb Butler."