Latest news with #BentonSawrey
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NC GOP lawmakers want to make Johnston County, other school board elections partisan
Republican state lawmakers want to make Johnston County school board elections partisan over the objections of the district's education leaders. In April, the school board rejected the Johnston County Republican Party request to ask the General Assembly to make its elections partisan. But this week, the state Senate added partisan school board races in Johnston and Gaston counties to a bill that would make Columbus County school board elections partisan. Sen. Benton Sawrey, a Johnston County Republican, said the entire county legislative delegation requested the change. All the Johnston County state lawmakers are Republicans. 'Adding partisan labels on the ballot has widespread support in the county,' Sawrey said in an interview Wednesday. 'This change gives all voters consistent information about party affiliation and allows us to conduct elections in the same manner that we elect our county commissioners.' House Bill 116 was passed Tuesday by the Senate Elections Committee and Wednesday by the Senate Rules Committee. It will go to the full Senate for a vote before seeing if the House will support the changes to the bill it previously approved. If adopted, it would go into effect for the 2026 school board elections. Johnston County is North Carolina's seventh-largest school district. It has more than 36,000 students. In recent years, the district has made headlines for how Ronald Johnson was convicted of extortion charges and removed from the school board. School board chair Lyn Andrews did not immediately return a voicemail message and email on Wednesday from The News & Observer requesting comment on the legislation. Andrews, a registered Republican, was one of the members who voted down the resolution requesting the election change. School board member April Lee called it 'underhanded' how the election change was inserted into a separate bill. Lee, who is registered as unaffiliated but was supported by Democrats, had voted against the resolution. 'Even if you agree that our Board of Education elections should be partisan, do you agree with how this is being done?' Lee said in a Facebook post Tuesday. 'I know as a voter, I don't. Sneaking things in shouldn't be the way we do things.' The change is opposed by groups who say school board elections should be nonpartisan. 'What this bill does, it injects state and national politics into our school boards,' Mark Swallow, a member of the liberal activist group Democracy Out Loud, said at the Senate Elections Committee meeting. 'They do not need this poison. It does does not help our students' education.' The Republican-controlled General Assembly has sharply increased the number of partisan school board elections. State lawmakers have focused on making school board elections partisan in Republican areas, including Catawba, Craven, Henderson and Union counties. Prior to 2013, only 10 of North Carolina's 115 districts had partisan school board elections, according to EducationNC. But 52 school districts held partisan elections last November. The Johnston County Republican Party has promoted the switch to partisan elections as a way to win all seven school board seats. In an April Facebook post, the Johnston County GOP pointed out that the only non-Republicans elected countywide sit on the school board. Five of the school board seats are held by registered Republicans. One seat is held by a Democrat. One seat is held by an unaffiliated voter. 'Recent polling data from Differentiators Data, a premier North Carolina-based data and political intelligence firm, shows that 85% of all Johnston County General Election Voters prefer to have partisan labels on the ballot for County School Board Races,' the Johnston County Republican Party said in a Facebook post Tuesday. 'Further the data shows that Republicans prefer partisan labels by 86% and UNA by 87%.' Differentiators Data is a conservative consulting firm that has worked with dozens of powerful Republican political and business clients. Johnston County school board elections have been nonpartisan since state lawmakers passed legislation in 1997. According to a 1997 News & Observer article, school leaders hoped the change away from partisan elections would lead to the election of more minorities. 'Johnston County has grown from 80,000 people to 240,000 people since we made the change from partisan to nonpartisan several decades ago,' said Sawrey, the lawmaker. 'We owe it to our voters to make sure that they can easily identify some of the core values of a particular candidate.' But Swallow of Democracy Out Loud pointed out that neither Gaston County's school board nor Johnston County's school board had requested a move to partisan elections. Swallow said the change is likely to result in the election of more Republicans and fewer women to the school board. 'We all know school boards are to oversee and guide public education, ensure that schools are well run, resources are used wisely, high standards of academic performance are met while representing the whole community, and encourage the hire and retention of good teachers,' Swallow told lawmakers. 'This bill doesn't help with any of that.'
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NC Senate passes bill to reform prescription drug market, enhance transparency
The North Carolina Senate passed Wednesday, with unanimous support, a bill sponsors say is aimed at leveling the playing field for independent pharmacies and enhancing transparency through new regulations and oversight. The bill 'is one of the most sweeping reforms with respect to how we regulate the prescription drug market here in North Carolina,' said Sen. Benton Sawrey, a Clayton Republican and a primary sponsor of the bill.. It 'provides us with needed transparency' and 'protects our consumers,' Sawrey said Wednesday. The House passed its own pharmacy-related bill in late April, which also seeks to reform the industry. Senate leader Phil Berger said the Senate's bill was 'vetted significantly' by many interests with a stake in the health care industry. In response to concerns that the bill could lead to increased health care costs, Berger said, 'It's my belief that the Senate approach actually addresses those concerns in a way that should not lead to the kind of cost inflation that the House approach would lead to.' He said he believed the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, a statewide business advocacy organization, supports the bill. Efforts to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, have failed in the past, including a stalled 2023 attempt by Rep. Wayne Sasser, who criticized PBMs for their opaque practices, as reported by The News & Observer. The House and Senate will need to reconcile their versions of the bill for it to become law — something that has eluded the legislature for years. On the possibility of a consensus being reached, Berger said it 'remains to be seen.' 'I'm hopeful that we will. I think everybody agrees something needs to be done in that space, and we've just not been able to get something that we can build some agreement on,' he said. Convoluted industry The pharmaceutical distribution industry is complex, with numerous players. In broad terms: Drug manufacturers produce medications and distribute them to wholesalers or sometimes directly to pharmacies. Wholesalers then sell these drugs to various customers, including pharmacies. Pharmacy benefit managers — the PBMs — are a middleman. They negotiate rebates and discounts on drugs with manufacturers and wholesalers, on behalf of health plans. Pharmacies contract with PBMs to gain access to networks and submit claims for reimbursement at negotiated rates. Community pharmacies have been struggling to keep up, with low prescription reimbursements by PBMs and insurance plans cited as the cause by some. PBMs are often owned or are affiliated with mail-order or retail chains —for example, CVS Health owns the PBM CVS Caremark. PBMs have been accused of steering customers toward their own pharmacies. Since January 2022, at least 100 community pharmacies have closed in North Carolina. Nationally, 300 independent pharmacies closed in 2023 alone, according to the National Community Pharmacy Association (NCPA), which represents independent community pharmacies. Independent pharmacies often rely on Pharmacy Services Administrative Organizations, or PSAOs, to negotiate contracts with PBMs. The Senate bill regulates various players in this industry. Among other things, it would prohibit PBMs from reimbursing pharmacies in pharmacy deserts at rates below what they pay to acquire medications. PSAOs would also face new rules, needing to be licensed and regulated by the state's Department of Insurance. The bill would require the State Health Plan, which covers state employees, to consider adopting most of the bill's provisions in its next PBM contract. The plan's current PBM is CVS Caremark. The House bill focuses largely on PBMs, banning spread pricing — a practice where PBMs charge insurers more for a drug than they reimburse pharmacies and keep the difference. It also limits the fees PBMs can impose on pharmacies and prohibits favoritism toward PBM-affiliated pharmacies.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
NC Senate to consider bill ending certification process for new health care facilities
Two North Carolina Senate committees have advanced a bill repealing the state's 'certificate of need' law that requires new health care services and facilities go through an approval process to determine their necessity. Whether the General Assembly passes the bill, known as Senate Bill 370, may ultimately be a moot point. The state courts are currently considering a case that could also bring an end to certificate of need laws in North Carolina at the direction of the state Supreme Court, which in October wrote that the lawsuit's allegations 'could render the Certificate of Need law unconstitutional in all its applications.' Currently, 35 states require health care providers to complete the certificate of need process before creating certain new offerings. In North Carolina, that process is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services with the aim of restricting 'unnecessary increases in health care costs' and 'unnecessary health services and facilities based on geographic, demographic and economic consideration.' The North Carolina Healthcare Association, which represents hospitals, supports the practice, writing in a 2024 policy brief that the program 'ensures that hospitals and health systems maintain the resources to provide high-value care to all.' Proponents of certificate of need laws say they prevent unnecessary expenses on new medical facilities and services that would be underutilized and whose costs would ultimately be passed down to patients. Opponents say that in practice, the program impedes vital health care expansion and forces patients to shoulder the cost of millions in consulting and legal fees that hospitals pay to navigate the certificate of need process. Sen. Benton Sawrey (R-Johnston), one of the repeal bill's primary sponsors, criticized the certificate of need process as 'anticompetitive,' arguing that by allowing the market to decide where new facilities and services are necessary, patients will be better off and will be able to pay less for medical services. 'Ironically, a government program originally aimed at reducing health care prices is likely inflating them, at least in some situations,' Sawrey said. 'I think we can be proactive about this decision, but it requires a willingness to have that discussion rather than fall back time and again on the same entrenched positions that don't work, don't control costs, and don't let innovation occur in North Carolina's healthcare space.' Sen. Jim Burgin (R-Harnett), a longtime hospital board member, called the change 'long overdue' and said in his experience, the process to receive a certificate of need takes a minimum of two years and $500,000 in legal fees. 'We could do not any cancer treatments in Harnett County up until this past year,' Burgin said. 'We went through the CON process in the years, but it took six years — really eight, if you add the work-up to it — from the time we started talking about it.' Tim Rogers, CEO of the Association for Home and Hospice Care of North Carolina, said during public comment that his group believes the certificate of need law 'plays a vital role in ensuring the integrity, quality, and accessibility of this vital service.' 'The CON process helps prevent fraud, waste, and abuse by ensuring that new providers entering into North Carolina meet rigorous regulatory and financial standards before entering the market,' Rogers said. 'This screening reduces the risk of bad actors, exploiting Medicare and Medicaid, safeguarding taxpayer dollars while ethical business practices are held.' Cody Hand, a lobbyist with the North Carolina Radiation Oncology Society, said that linear accelerators, like those Burgin said were held up by the CON process in Harnett County, require such careful review because they emit ionizing radiation and so are classified as nuclear technology. 'They require strict safety protocols that in this state don't exist outside of the CON process,' Hand said. 'The CON process serves as a critical checkpoint in both the safety and the staffing, not necessarily for cost control and not necessarily for planning, but for safety and accountability.' After passing the Health Care committee Wednesday, the bill received a favorable recommendation from the Senate Rules Committee Thursday morning. It has not yet been scheduled for a vote on the Senate floor.
