State Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls objects to a requested time extension for a formal response to her federal First Amendment lawsuit. Earls’ latest court filing offers details about her ongoing dispute with a state judicial standards group.
A new report from Duke University School of Law researchers and the state treasurer’s office reveals the ways that medical debt collection practices by North Carolina hospitals are harming residents.
Unions won a new stronghold in North Carolina. Patients will pay the price, experts say. A national nurse’s union won a vote to organize 1,800 registered nurses across western North Carolina. The 965 votes to unionize Mission Health dwarfed 411 in opposition. The vote caps a long fight between HCA Healthcare, the country’s largest hospital...
North Carolina is home to one of the biggest union battles in the South. Mission Health in Asheville is fighting efforts to unionize 1,600 registered nurses. The clash pits HCA Healthcare, the largest hospital system in America, against the National Nurses Organizing Committee, the nation’s largest registered nurses’ union. If the nurses successfully unionize in...
This summer, a Canadian grocery store took the war on plastic bags to the next level. Vancouver’s East West Market not only charges 5 cents per plastic bag, but the bags also carry embarrassing messages: saying things such as “Dr. Toews’ Wart Ointment Wholesale,” “Into the Weird Adult Video Emporium,” and “The Colon Care Co-op,”...
Mark Davis said he is the happiest person in North Carolina after being appointed to a seat on the N.C. Supreme Court. Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, is not so pleased. Davis is a Democratic member of the N.C. Court of Appeals. With his appointment, the Supreme Court now has a 6-1 partisan makeup favoring...
Senate District 41 (Northern and western Mecklenburg County). • Jeffrey Tarte, Republican. (Three-term incumbent). Occupation: Founder and chairman emeritus of Applied Revenue Analytics, a multimillion-dollar consulting firm. Education: University of Illinois, economics degree. Attended executive education courses at Duke University Fuqua School of Business, and Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. Career Highlights: Former partner,...
Health policy experts say President Donald Trump could rekindle Obamacare repeal efforts by killing the handouts insulating Congress from the program’s costs. “If Obamacare is so great, why isn’t Congress abiding by its rules? Rescinding the carve-out would expose Congress to the actual cost of Obamacare,” said Katherine Restrepo, health care policy analyst at the...
Backers of the state’s Opportunity Scholarship Program for low-income students continue to challenge a report from Duke University claiming the program doesn’t help scholarship recipients learn. A recent white paper from Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, a nonprofit that backs opportunity scholarships, charter schools and other forms of parental choice, was designed to “set...
N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein’s selection for chief deputy attorney general wrote a legal memo supporting “contingency funds” that were outside legislative oversight in an opinion that seemed to be at odds with his boss at the time, Roy Cooper, who now is North Carolina’s governor. More than a decade ago, Grayson Kelley wrote an advisory...
Nearly three dozen physicians, clinicians, university academics, parents, and assorted health association representatives attended a March 30 public hearing on Medicaid reform — the state’s first — and predictably, the most common topic of testimony was a plea to expand Medicaid under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Sandy Irving, representing the North Carolina Council of...
