Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press Meredith Brooke Bass, 44, grew up with Jefferson Griffin. A year ahead of him in school, she was best friends with one of his first cousins. Today, they’re still personal Facebook friends. But Bass didn’t vote for Griffin for North Carolina Supreme Court; she opted for Democrat Allison Riggs instead. Now, […]
WFDD Radio Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield is under scrutiny for its plans to impose time limits on anesthesia coverage. Doctors and policymakers are sounding the alarm after one of the country’s largest health insurers announced that starting next year, in certain states, it will no longer pay for anesthesia care if the surgery or […]
Joseph Politano/Apricitas Economics This Thanksgiving, many Americans ended up with more leftovers than usual—the use of recently discovered GLP-1 drugs is rapidly increasing as millions of people turn to them for help in battling obesity and cardiovascular diseases. These drugs work as appetite suppressants, helping patients regulate food intake by reducing feelings of hunger, and […]
Trista Talton/Coastal Review Online Wayne Lewis stood before state environmental regulatory officials Monday night and told the story about his wife. He described how, on an evening in 2009 just before she went to bed, she started vomiting blood. He detailed how the couple was shocked by her medical diagnosis: sclerosis of the liver. He […]
Jaymie Baxley/NC Health News While campaigning to become the state’s 75th governor in 2016, Roy Cooper said he wanted to help low-income North Carolinians who had been forced to forgo basic medical care because they could not afford health insurance. He finally achieved that goal six years later when North Carolina expanded Medicaid. The decade-in-the-making […]
Elyse Apel/The Center Square Legislators in Washington, D.C., have taken a number of steps over the past few days to push for insurance and pharmaceutical reforms to be passed before the end of the year. On Wednesday, a bicameral group of Republican and Democrat lawmakers held a press conference discussing the need for pharmacy benefit […]
Chantal Brown/Education NC The U.S. News & World Report released its updated lists ranking public North Carolina elementary, middle, and high schools for 2024. Rankings are based on factors such as student proficiency and performance. For schools serving kindergarten through eighth grade, rankings rely on student proficiency in reading and writing and student performance on […]
Gareth McGrath/USA Today Network The N.C. Coastal Land Trust has secured another grant to help with the nonprofit group’s push to protect a popular and much-loved piece of oceanfront land at the southern tip of Topsail Island. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has awarded the land trust $500,000 to help with the purchase of […]
John Boyle/Asheville Watchdog While the City of Asheville has restored potable water to its 63,000 customers, it’s still struggling with high turbidity at its main reservoir, North Fork. Filtering that cloudy water remains a challenge, but major assistance is on the way this week in the form of a $39 million six-month project spearheaded by […]
Outgoing House Speaker Tim Moore has appointed 47 of the chamber’s 120 members to serve on a House Select Committee on Helene Recovery that will continue on into the 2025 session of the General Assembly. Reps. John Bell, R-Wayne, and Dudley Greene, R-McDowell, will co-chair the panel. Bell is the current majority leader and will […]
State officials have pledged a $100,000 grant to a German copper manufacturer that says it’ll add 50 jobs and spend more than $27 million to expand a production facility in Stokes County. The company, Wieland, acquired the facility near Belews Lake in 2010 and uses it to make copper tubing. It intends the planned expansion […]
Continuing our look at the admissions practices of UNC System campuses, consider the HBCUs and UNC Pembroke. System data indicates that only Pembroke and N.C. Central have the same sort of defacto open admissions as historically white campuses like East Carolina and Appalachian State. Pembroke offers a seat to 92.2% of the recent high-schoolers who […]
With the advent of Senate Democrats’ new caucus leader, Sen. Sydney Batch, it’s a good time to consider if she can raise money as well as the previous leader, fellow Wake County Sen. Dan Blue. The available evidence suggests she’s capable on that front. Her campaign committee’s reports to the State Board of Elections show […]
Cory Vaillancourt/Smoky Mountain News Since his election in 2022, Haywood County Commissioner Terry Ramey has been known for lying — about his delinquent taxes, about his votes, about being assaulted — but this time, his acquiescent appearance in a YouTube video that spread misinformation about the county’s powers to circumvent state law has Ramey’s fellow […]
Chelsia Rose Marcius & Maria Cramer/The New York Times A furious manhunt was underway in Manhattan after the head of one of the nation’s largest health insurers was gunned down on Wednesday morning in what the police called a “brazen targeted attack.” A gunman lay in wait for the executive outside a hotel in Midtown, […]
