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About 634,000 North Carolina residents would gain health-care coverage over the next three years if the state expands access to Medicaid, a new report released today says.

The report, paid for by the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust and the Cone Health Foundation and done by George Washington University researchers, comes as the state’s lawmakers debate expansion of the state’s Medicaid program.

According to the report, if Medicaid were expanded as early as November 2019, 464,000 North Carolinians would gain coverage by the end of 2020; by the end of 2022, that number would increase to 634,000.

Medicaid already serves 2.14 million North Carolinians, representing about 21% of the state population. Another 1.6 million will be enrolled in Medicaid through a new managed-care program that is projected to be rolled out in the state between November and February.

The report determined that expanding Medicaid would create more than 37,000 jobs, including 20,600 in the health-care sector, by the end of 2022, as well as bring in an additional $11.7 billion in federal Medicaid funding from 2020 to 2022.

An earlier report, done in 2014 by the same group, projected 8,962 jobs created and 93,471 more individuals insured by 2020.