NC legislature sets all 2016 primaries for March 15

WFDD’s Keri Brown & Sean Bueter discuss the new Medicaid bill in North Carolina and how it differs from the current system.

The mayor of a small North Carolina town near Fort Bragg is running next year for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican Richard Burr. Medicaid is the government-run health insurance program serving low-income residents. Other projects, however, included in Gov. Pat McCrory’s original $3 billion Connect NC proposal are still on the cutting room floor, including $11.5 million for a new visitors center at the Battleship North Carolina and $3.5 million for shoreline protection improvements at the Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson Historic Site near Orton Plantation in Brunswick County. So what differences can people enrolled in Medicaid expect?

What’s going on here? The House also must vote on the agreed-to changes. That bill is moving toward final legislative approval. Providers will be paid on a capitated basis, receiving a fixed amount for participating in the Medicaid system, as opposed to being paid for individual services. If lenders get even more edgy about North Carolina’s shaky fiscal house, they may demand higher interest rates in a few years’ time when the last of the bonds authorized by HB 943 would go to the credit market.

The group that produced the videos said they prove Planned Parenthood is profiting from fetal tissue sales, which is illegal under federal law.

$110 million for a replacement for the natural sciences building at WCU.

What advantages do supporters of the change see in doing it this way?

McCrory had favored a larger proposal that would include money for roads. Proponents of the change say this will provide a more predictable way to forecast costs. Officials with the group in North Carolina say they don’t sell or donate fetal tissue, and that the bill is “nothing more than another political attack on safe and legal abortion” in the state.

But as Democracy North Carolina’s Bob Hall points out, the new committees also dramatically expand pay-to-play politics in the state. For example, what standards will be in place to measure quality and accessibility of care?

And this won’t happen right away.

Rep. George Cleveland (R-Onslow), the lead author of the bill in the House of Representatives, presented the new plan to the committee, and has said his goal is to keep people from migrating illegally to the state.