NC News Oct. 8, 2026

Report Ranks NC 48th on Medicaid

North Carolina ranks 48th out of 50 states for how it runs Medicaid in a report card released in September by the free-market Heartland Institute, ahead of only Rhode Island and California.

The state scored 28 of 100 points on 16 measures. Kansas topped the list with 74. The national average was 45.5.

The report docked North Carolina for expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, not acting on work requirements, limiting new hospitals and clinics through certificate-of-need laws, and winning few fraud convictions.

Medicaid covers about 3 million North Carolinians, roughly one in four residents. Expansion, approved in a bipartisan 2023 law, now covers about 740,000 adults and is the most heavily weighted item on the Heartland Institute’s scorecard.

Beginning Jan. 1, those expansion enrollees must work, study, or volunteer 80 hours a month to keep coverage under a 2025 federal law.

Isaias to Soak NC This Weekend

Tropical Storm Isaias will spread rain across North Carolina this weekend after an expected Gulf Coast landfall, with the heaviest totals in the mountains and near the coast.

Rain is expected to arrive Saturday and continue through Sunday. Forecasters project 2 to 3 inches in the mountains and along the coast, with locally higher amounts, and about an inch in the central Piedmont.

The mountain rain brings a localized flood risk to a region still recovering from Hurricane Helene. Meteorologists urge residents in flood-prone areas to stay alert.

Isaias, the ninth named storm of the Atlantic season, formed in the Gulf and is forecast to strengthen into a Category 2 hurricane before coming ashore late Friday or early Saturday, then weaken inland.

Turtle Deaths Halt Buxton Beach Project

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers halted a beach rebuilding project in Buxton at 95% completion after dredging exceeded the permit limit for accidental deaths of endangered sea turtles.

Dare County’s assistant manager, Dustin Peele, said the county’s permit allows eight endangered sea turtle deaths, and that once nine were reported, the project stopped.

Crews had placed about 1.9 million of the planned 2 million cubic yards of sand onto the shoreline beside the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse before work ended Oct. 3. The roughly 100,000 cubic yards left unplaced were meant for a less vulnerable northern stretch.

Buxton has lost several oceanfront homes to erosion in recent years. A late-September nor’easter damaged about 500 feet of N.C. 12, the island’s only highway, near Pea Island. County officials said Buxton’s new dune held through that storm.