Hundreds of thousands in North Carolina will be able to the game this week..

(AP) — RALEIGH, N.C. Hundreds of thousands of adults in North Carolina are scheduled to receive benefits from Medicaid, a decade after the federal government started offering expanded coverage in states that chose to accept it. Proponents of the program say this will benefit not only the long-term uninsured but also local economies and hospitals.

This year, North Carolina’s elected officials decided to expand Medicaid. This will allow adults between the ages of 19 and 64 who earn too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid but not enough to typically benefit from public subsidies for private health insurance, to receive government-funded health insurance. As required by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, 90% of the costs will be covered by the federal government.

In the end, it is anticipated that over 600,000 North Carolinians would be eligible, with over half of them being automatically enrolled as of Friday. This implies that there will be little to no out-of-pocket cost for them to have yearly physicals, prescription medications, and other services.

Carrie McBane and other locals have spent years bridging the financial gap between earning too much to be eligible for Medicaid and too little to pay for private insurance. She believes that greater eligibility will help the working class in the state come back, particularly in tiny towns like Sylva, a little mountain hamlet 290 miles (467 kilometers) west of Raleigh.

The 50-year-old had to pay for her own visits to multiple doctors who were unable to diagnose her crippling condition until one of them identified Type 2 diabetes. She was barely able to work enough hours as a restaurant waitress to pay for insulin and her other new prescriptions by that point since her organs were failing. She claimed that her monthly income was still roughly $100 over the Medicaid eligibility limit.

“It’s the worst feeling in the world to know that something is seriously wrong with your body but not knowing what’s causing it and not getting any support from the medical community,” McBane remarked. “And the bills mount up the sicker you get.”

North Carolina is now the forty-first state to choose to participate in the Medicaid expansion program. Additionally, the District of Columbia takes part. After years of opposition, some Republican-led states have recently given expansion some thought. Their main concern was that they feared changes in federal policy would force the states to shoulder a larger share of the costs. The remaining ten states that abstain are primarily in the Midwest and South and are governed by Republicans.