Michael Whatley is running against former Governor Roy Cooper for North Carolina's open U.S. Senate seat. He has a number he likes to use against Cooper: 183%.
According to American Journal News, Whatley said on a Breitbart News podcast that health insurance premiums in North Carolina "went up 183%" during Cooper's two terms as governor, and said it again at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas last week:
"Under Roy Cooper's reign, North Carolina became the most expensive state in the nation for health care costs. Under his watch, health care companies have raised insurance premiums 183%, hurting our families' bottom lines as they already struggle to make ends meet."
Health care costs are a real worry. In an April poll, about nine in 10 voters nationwide told KFF the issue will influence their vote. That's exactly why the number Whatley uses matters. And the number doesn't say what he says it does.
Where "183%" comes from
The figure appears to come from a March 2021 Heritage Foundation issue brief titled "Obamacare Has Doubled the Cost of Individual Health Insurance." Heritage is a conservative think tank. Its brief was an attack on the Affordable Care Act, not on any governor.
Table 1 in that brief lists average monthly premiums paid per person in the individual insurance market, by state, from 2013 through 2019. Here is North Carolina's row, exactly as Heritage printed it:
| 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Change, 2013–2019 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $240 | $362 | $394 | $456 | $592 | $706 | $680 | 183% |
There's the 183%. It measures 2013 to 2019.
Roy Cooper became governor in 2017. The four years before that, North Carolina's governor was Republican Pat McCrory.
Read the table yourself
You don't need an economist for this. Just look at the row.
- Premiums went from $240 in 2013 to $456 in 2016, the year before Cooper took office. That's nearly half the climb, before he was governor.
- By Cooper's third year, 2019, they were at $680. That's where Heritage's table stops.
So the 183% number starts four years before Cooper was governor and ends three years into his time in office. It says nothing at all about 2020 through 2024, the rest of his two terms.
Whatley took a number that is half about his own party's governor, and hung all of it on Cooper.
What happened during the rest of Cooper's time
American Journal News went back to the same federal data Heritage used, the medical loss ratio reports insurers file with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. By its count, average premiums in North Carolina fell 12% during Cooper's time in office, from 2017 to 2024. It reports that was the third-largest drop of any state over that stretch.
In other words, the same kind of data Whatley is leaning on points the other way once you look at the years Cooper was actually governor.
"The most expensive state"
The other half of Whatley's line, that North Carolina "became the most expensive state in the nation for health care costs," has problems too.
That claim traces to a Forbes study published in January 2025. According to American Journal News, researchers at Ascendient Healthcare, a North Carolina consulting firm, disputed it, pointing out that it leaned mostly on the premiums and deductibles of people with insurance through work, and fewer than half of North Carolinians get coverage that way.
Even North Carolina's Republican state treasurer, Brad Briner, was skeptical. He told Carolina Public Press: "What is the methodology here? What is the ulterior motive here?"
Forbes ended up taking the study down.
Not the first time
This is a pattern with Whatley on the economy. Earlier this month we showed he has said grocery, gas and housing prices were all down and "there is no inflation." The government's own numbers say the opposite.
When a candidate's numbers keep falling apart the moment someone checks them, voters should ask why he keeps using them.
What the table shows
Michael Whatley has told voters, on a Breitbart podcast and at the Republican convention, that insurers raised premiums 183% "under Roy Cooper's reign." That figure comes from a Heritage Foundation table covering 2013 to 2019. By that table's own numbers, North Carolina premiums had already risen from $240 to $456 by 2016, the year before Cooper took office, and the table ends in 2019, three years into his eight. Using the same federal insurer data, American Journal News found premiums fell 12% from 2017 to 2024.
Source
- American Journal News: Whatley's 183% health care claim doesn't add up
- The Heritage Foundation: Obamacare Has Doubled the Cost of Individual Health Insurance (Table 1)
Photo: Chris Seward/AP, via American Journal News.
