Each week, staff at Carolina Journal looks back at the week in N.C. politics and chooses several interesting, relevant stories you may have missed.
Medical bills and price transparency: Patients will have an easier time knowing what they’ll pay for medical services at UNC Health. The system will roll out an online tool that will give patients an estimate of the cost of some procedures and visits. But the new price transparency is the result of new rules from the Trump administration. President Trump required hospitals to post their prices by January. Hospitals sued to keep prices secret, but they lost the first round in court in June. A federal judge ruled that hospitals were “attacking transparency measures generally” to restrict patients’ access to medical prices. Medical prices are notoriously opaque, and hospitals account for much of the soaring cost of health care in the U.S. In North Carolina, some hospitals charge patients more than twice as much as others but mul
Updated December 9, 2020 8:54 p.m. EST
By Travis Fain, WRAL statehouse reporter
Raleigh, N.C. A state association of public school superintendents met last week in Greensboro for an in-person winter conference, and two attendees have tested positive for coronavirus, the group s executive director confirmed Wednesday.
The North Carolina School Superintendents Association, an advocacy and professional development group, held a multi-day conference last week at the Grandover Resort & Conference Center. The two attendees who tested positive are doing well, and all attendees have been notified, Executive Director Jack Hoke said. We followed all the regulations, Hoke said.
Executive orders in place limiting indoor public gatherings to 10 people have a number of exemptions, including for meetings in event spaces, which are limited to 100 people or 30 percent of fire code occupancy, whichever is smaller. Hoke said the group met that restriction and also wore masks, practiced so