health care

This week, the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Health and Human Services met to discuss a variety of policy issues, including telemedicine. Defined as “delivering health care at a distance,”…

The power to grant a right to health care is the right to deny it. Anyone who doubts the universal truth of this statement need look no further than the…

Local governments across North Carolina, like other employers, are wrestling with the question of how to provide quality health care to their employees in a cost-effective manner. This is…

RALEIGH — The sixth anniversary of the federal Affordable Care Act offers N.C. policymakers a chance to reflect on changes that could help improve health care in this state. That’s…

Direct primary care restores the incredible value of personalized medicine, benefiting patients, doctors, employers, and the state.

Click here to view Katherine Restrepo discussing this Spotlight report. RALEIGH — North Carolina policymakers should take steps to make the state even friendlier to direct primary care. It’s…

For fiscal year 2015-16, the General Fund budget will rise 3.1 percent to $21.7 billion, below the combined rates of population growth and inflation. The following year, the budget will have an overall increase of less than one-percent.

What the healthcare industry needs is a strong dose of disruptive innovation — relaxing regulations that will increase provider competition, force downward pressure on costs, and enhance patient choice. CON ultimately picks who gets to compete within the health care sector. Reforming the law will by no means untangle the complexities of health care, but state lawmakers should capitalize on an opportunity to make one of the most highly regulated industries a little less heavy on the red tape and a little more patient friendly.

The John Locke Foundation is continuing its tradition, started in 1995, of offering an alternative to the governor’s budget recommendation. Consistent with prior years, this JLF budget focuses on core government. This budget spends less in both years of the biennium than the governor’s, and only increases spending by 2 percent from the last fiscal year.

For fiscal year 2014-15, North Carolina’s General Fund budget rose 2.2 percent to $21.1 billion. It funded an average teacher salary increase of 7 percent, one of the largest pay raises for North Carolina teachers in a generation, and created a Medicaid contingency fund of $186.4 million.