North Carolina's largest health insurer will be allowed to raise premiums by between 16 percent and 24 percent on policies that would have been canceled for failing to meet minimum requirements required by the federal overhaul law, the state's insurance commissioner said Tuesday.

This month's glitch-filled rollout of the health insurance marketplaces created by federal law is a business opportunity for brokers and agents, but regulators warn it also opened the door for those who would seek to line their pockets by misleading consumers.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is opening half a dozen strip mall offices statewide to educate and enroll consumers shopping for coverage.

With changes to its unemployment law taking effect this weekend, North Carolina not only is cutting benefits for those who file new claims, it will become the first state disqualified from a federal compensation program for the long-term jobless.

North Carolina business recruiters say a historically outsized package of about $100 million in state and local incentives to get MetLife Inc. to move 2,600 jobs from other states to North Carolina could stall benefits to other companies or force lawmakers to loosen up the rules.

Republicans in control of North Carolina's General Assembly introduced legislation Wednesday that would block the expansion of Medicaid under the health care overhaul and leave it to the federal government to build the state's online marketplace for health insurance.

North Carolina and the federal government will jointly run a new one-stop shop to help people buy affordable health insurance, Gov. Beverly Perdue said Thursday.

North Carolina's Republican-led Legislature plans to revisit last year's bitter stalemate with Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue that led to more than 47,000 unemployed people being cut off from jobless benefits for months.