How Adam Searing got to be the resident healthcare expert in North Carolina is beyond me. Left-leaning papers evidently call him for quotes. They think he actually has a clue. Just take this paraphrase from an (unsurprisingly biased) N&O article on BCBSNC:
Adam Searing, director of the N.C. Health Access Coalition, considers the company’s talk about expanding health insurance nothing more than a public relations ploy. People are worried about not having health insurance, Searing said, and Blue Cross doesn’t want to look like the enemy. The company isn’t talking seriously about rising costs, Searing said, the reason that people lose coverage.
And yet Searing has supported all of the legislation – e.g. mental health mandates and the high risk pool – that drive up the costs he claims to be worried about. Indeed, BCBSNC stands only to benefit from the regulatory environment Searing supports, because they consolidate more and more monopoly power that way. Competitors wouldn’t dream of navigating these waters, especially since the barriers to entry are already so high — which is precisely why they’re "helping to craft" the legislation. All of this supposedly dubious activity on the part of BCBSNC is totally predicable when government sticks its nose in to such an incredible degree. Now we’re reaping what we’ve sewn and we want to blame the insurance provider for the mess the government has made (all at the prodding of "experts" like Searing)?
I don’t call myself a healthcare expert, but I would debate Adam Searing any day — in print or in person.
-Max Borders
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