News

Folwell calls out hospitals for ignoring price transparency law

Editor’s note: The number of hospitals included in the Patient Rights Advocate study has been changed, based on updated information from the Office of the State Treasurer. State Treasurer Dale Folwell is raising concerns about hospitals’ compliance with federal price transparency laws. Folwell highlights new research that “directly counters” competing claims about price transparency from...

CJ Staff
Video

Locke’s Mitch Kokai discusses Johns Hopkins study panning lockdowns

Mitch Kokai, John Locke Foundation senior political analyst, discusses a new Johns Hopkins University study spelling out the problems linked to COVID-19 lockdowns. Kokai offered these comments during the Feb. 4, 2022, edition of PBS North Carolina’s “Front Row with Marc Rotterman.”  

Mitch Kokai
News

Health commission denies petition for mandatory student COVID vaccines

The N.C. Commission for Public Health denied a petition from UNC-affiliated universities requesting that all 17-year-old seniors entering the college system be vaccinated against COVID-19. The action occurred at the commission’s Wednesday, Feb. 2 meeting. At the same time, groups called Citizen Advocates for Accountable Government and Moms for Liberty held a protest outside the state...

Theresa Opeka
Opinion

Next COVID variant can be more contagious than the last. So be it.

COVID will be with us always, in one form or another. That realization, based on evidence and, yes, science, isn’t news. Yet finally, politicians and health experts are admitting as much. What took them so long, because something tells me they, too, knew long ago that COVID would not simply disappear? “‘We’ve understood we’re not...

John Trump
News

New Bern eye doctor reignites fight against CON law

A New Bern-based eye surgeon continues his campaign against North Carolina’s certificate-of-need restrictions. A newly filed brief at the N.C. Court of Appeals aims to help keep that campaign alive. “The State wants this case to be about whether the legislature could have thought it was rational to adopt the CON Law over 40 years...

CJ Staff

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News

Hospitals take more heat from treasurer; calls for change in billing practices

State Treasurer Dale Folwell is once again sounding the alarm on some nonprofit hospitals in the state, with a new report that shows low-income patients are being billed when they were eligible for charity care. This comes on the heels of a similar report released in October by Folwell, who oversees the State Health Plan...

Theresa Opeka
News

Appeals dropped in lawsuit challenging state’s Medicaid transformation decisions

Less than a week before lawyers on both sides of the case were scheduled to head to the N.C. Court of Appeals, a lawsuit challenging key decisions in North Carolina’s Medicaid “transformation” is going away. Two health care providers, Aetna and My Health, filed paperwork Wednesday asking the Appeals Court to dismiss their appeals. Both...

CJ Staff
News

Poll: Majority of likely Dem voters want fines, home confinement for the unvaccinated

A new Rasmussen poll finds that a majority of likely Democratic voters favor taking strong action against Americans who are not vaccinated against COVID-19, including fines and home confinement. Forty-eight percent of Democrats also would give the green light to government fines or imprisonment for those who question the efficacy of the vaccine on social...

David N. Bass
Opinion

COVID is here to stay, so let’s start dealing with it

It’s well past time to try a different approach with COVID, and the Omicron variant in particular. The mainstream media must adjust its reporting, as well, to reflect reality and, well, to infuse some common sense. To stop reporting the rise in cases and hospitalizations, because both are skewed and fundamentally inaccurate. It’s one thing...

John Trump
Opinion

We have much fear already, so stop trying to create angst, uncertainty

We have so much to fear. From an innumerable list of things natural and manmade. If that is, we choose to effectually succumb to the doubt and the uncertainty. The mainstream media, in fact, encapsulates that fear and profits from it, driving ratings and online viewership. Niche websites, coming from all directions, do much of...

John Trump
News

Cooper to extend vaccine, testing requirements for state employees

Gov. Roy Cooper on Tuesday, Jan. 4, said health experts, doctors, and scientists are learning more about COVID-19, and state officials and politicians are using that knowledge to keep schools open and to avoid more onerous shutdowns and suppressions. In a news briefing, Cooper said people have to start learning to live with the virus,...

John Trump