The contrast between Governor Roy Cooper and DC insider Michael Whatley couldn’t be more clear. While Governor Cooper expanded Medicaid for more than 650,000 North Carolinians and fought to eliminate up to $4 billion in medical debt for working families, Whatley has cheered on the GOP’s toxic law that guts Medicaid, threatens to shutter rural hospitals, and spikes costs in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires.

Read more below on Governor Cooper’s record of delivering for working families while Michael Whatley’s dangerous agenda puts North Carolinians’ health care at risk.

WFAE: Medicaid expansion helped hundreds of thousands in NC. Now, it’s future is uncertain

August 25, 2025 | Nick De La Canal

• Nearly 680,000 North Carolinians have gained coverage since [Medicaid Expansion] launched in 2023. But President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the sweeping tax and spending package signed into law earlier this summer, could put that coverage and the survival of some rural hospitals at risk.
• Over the past two years, [Dr. Laura] Ucik says more and more of her patients have gained coverage through North Carolina’s Medicaid expansion. For her, it’s been transformative.
• Before expansion, many patients skipped care they couldn’t afford. Now, she says, she can order tests and know they’ll get done. Patients can see specialists, afford insulin, get transportation to and from appointments and access life-saving medication.
• But her enthusiasm has turned to worry since the Republican-backed tax and spending bill became law.
• Since Medicaid expansion began in 2023, more than a third of the nearly 680,000 new enrollees have come from rural counties. That has brought new revenue to struggling hospitals.
• Not only would thousands lose coverage, but the fallout could ripple through the state’s entire economy.
• “Rural hospitals are often the largest employers in these tiny towns as well,” says Dr. Joel Gallagher, an allergist in Reidsville. “So keeping them open really allows a whole community to thrive.”

NC Newsline: North Carolinians are finding out they are no longer in debt to hospitals

August 25, 2025 | Lynn Bonner 

• Medicaid enrollees began receiving letters from hospitals last month telling them their old medical debts have been erased.  
• That medical debt relief is part of the program former Gov. Roy Cooper and the former head of the state Department of Health and Human Services announced last year that increases hospitals’  Medicaid payments in exchange for erasing debts amassed by people with lower incomes. 
• As part of the program, hospitals had to agree to measures that would help people from going into debt in the first place, agree not sell to collectors the debts of people whose incomes are below 300% of the federal poverty level, or to report patients covered under the policy to credit reporting agencies.
• The program may eventually erase $4 billion in medical debt.

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