GOP agenda items for schools, COVID, elections, judicial retirement are included in omnibus proposal -- Medicaid expansion could be impacted The budget state House Republicans presented this week would increase teacher salaries an average of 10% over two years and give state employees 7.5% raises over the two-year budget cycle.

Bill introduced at the behest of Blue Cross Blue Shield will be heard in a state House committee Tuesday The state’s largest health insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, wants the legislature to allow it to reorganize its business structure so that it can sidestep a 25-year-old law requiring it to compensate the state for decades of tax breaks.

A Democratic court majority struck down maps as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders, but a new GOP majority has been asked to do an about-face. State Republican legislators Tuesday brought their argument that courts cannot bar partisan redistricting to a friendlier state Supreme Court than the one that ruled against them last year. 

CDC information shows that maternal mortality in North Carolina for women within 42 days of giving birth increased from a rate of 22 per 100,000 births in 2019, to 29 per 100,000 in 2020, and to 44 per 100,000 births in 2021, according to data released by the investigative news organization MuckRock. “It’s a huge jump, especially in such a short period of time,” said Keisha Bentley-Edwards, a Duke University researcher who studies health equity. Black women continued to be more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related causes.

Lela Ali was in the Legislative Building last Wednesday as the organization she is part of, Muslim Women For, works to oppose a bill that would require sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials.  She also happened  to be sitting in the House gallery that day as lawmakers approved a bill along party lines that takes responsibility for the state’s three schools for deaf and blind students away from the State Board of Education and gives it to local boards of trustees. 

People who use Medicaid and have severe mental illness, substance use disorders or developmental disabilities soon might have to switch doctors if their health care providers don’t sign on with new managed care plans.   These providers include many of the state’s large health systems, major hospitals and their physicians’ offices. They have been slow to sign on to Medicaid managed care networks that the state calls tailored plans. These plans are supposed to cover both the physical and mental health needs of people with behavioral health or cognitive disorders.  

Speakers agree Medicaid expansion is key; GOP lawmakers say a vote could come as early as March Cindy Ehlers is mother to a son with disabilities who came to live with her family as a traumatized young foster child.   Ehlers is also a chief executive officer at one of the state’s regional managed care organizations for people with mental illnesses, substance use disorders, and developmental disabilities.

About 300,000 people in North Carolina are on track to lose their government health insurance by the middle of next year.   That estimate comes from the state Department for Health and Human Services, which is preparing plans to have Medicaid recipients’ family, health, and income information checked to make sure they are eligible for the insurance plan.

Who did North Carolina voters send to Raleigh this year for the new legislative session? We know that Republicans made gains in the November election and now hold 30 of 50 seats in the Senate and 71 of 120 in the House, but here is a by-the-numbers look at some additional details about who is representing us in Raleigh, according to documents filed by the House and Senate clerks.  

The North Carolina legislative session begins Wednesday with a more conservative House and Senate and an environment in which GOP leaders will have an easier time pushing state laws and policies further to the right.   Republicans gained seats in both the House and Senate in the November election. The GOP won a veto-proof majority in the Senate and is one vote shy of a veto-proof majority in the House, making it much more likely that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes can be overturned.