For years Republicans, who have carried the biggest bat in Raleigh, have refused to even talk about Medicaid expansion. But that has changed in recent days, and momentum is clearly in favor of some kind of compromise that would provide health insurance for hundreds of thousands of North Carolina residents caught in the gap — earning too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford private insurance.

The benefits to Scotland County are too much to ignore, even if taken from a nonpartisan study that fixes the number of people who would benefit at significantly fewer than claimed by Gov. Roy Cooper and fellow Democrats.

Cooper and Democrats say Medicaid expansion would deliver health insurance to as many as 600,000 state residents, while the study, by George Washington University, fixes that number at about 370,000 people. The study also determines Medicaid expansion would boost the state’s economy by $11.7 billion a year while creating 37,000 new jobs.

Those numbers, even though more modest than what Democrats promise, are eye opening.

The devil, however, is in the details, and that is what separates Cooper and Republicans — but we don’t think permanently.

Cooper, emboldened by the 2018 elections that took from the GOP a veto-proof majority in the House, has made Medicaid expansion a condition of signing the Republican budget.

Republicans, in what is clearly a major concession, have told Cooper if he signed the budget, that a special legislative session can be held during which Medicaid can get a worthy hearing. But, in what could be seen as a fall-back position, Republicans in a House committee last week discussed a Medicaid “hybrid” that would allow expansion with conditions, such as beneficiaries work and pick up the 10 percent cost of expansion that the federal government requires of the state.

As Cooper and Republicans continue to differ on the details, swinging in the wind is the GOP budget, which will be revisited this week when House Speaker Tim Moore might call for the veto override. Moore needs seven House Democrats to defect.

We are greedy, and want both — the Republican budget either as it is or a very precise facsimile, as well as Medicaid expansion, in whatever form is palatable to Republicans and Democrats.

We believe that both would benefit all of North Carolina, but this county in many more and larger ways.

As Larry the Cable Guy was famous for saying, “get ‘er done.”

— The Robesonian, Lumberton