Folwell calls The Blue Cross dark money bluff

For years, Blue Cross Blue Shield has dominated – in spite of horrible customer service – the health insurance game in North Carolina.  State treasurer Dale Folwell recently taught the insurance giant a valuable lesson about taking customers for granted. Folwell encouraged competition for the third-party administrator gig at the State Health Plan – a role BCBS has had a stranglehold on for some time.  

Aetna took the job away from Blue Cross.  Instead of learning a lesson about poor customer service costing one business, Blue Cross hired a lot of Raleigh influence-peddlers and political hacks to go after Folwell personally.  The ‘Men Behind The Curtain’ tried — emphasis on TRIED – to engineer a story about some sort of corrupt conspiracy.

Treasurer Folwell and his team have decided, in response, to release all the documentation on the deal that sent Blue Cross packing and brought Aetna on board with the state health plan.  The documents can be found on a searchable website.

This new page / site should properly shame all of the drive-bys who took dictation from the Men-behind-the-curtain about some preposterous rigged deal to kick Blue Cross off of the state government gravy train

The award to Aetna was the result of a competitive bid process in which the Plan solicited and selected industry-leading partners providing exceptional customer service, technological resources and professional support. The services under the contract include processing claims and offering a comprehensive network of health care providers. It also reflects a partnership that focuses on transparency and lower costs.

The new three-year claims processing contract was awarded after a standard, competitive and modernized bid process in which submissions were evaluated by an in-house team of subject matter experts and outside professionals, with scores assigned to various sections. The contract went to bid during the first year of an existing three-year contract to allow two years for transition if one was needed. Posting these documents online provides additional transparency into the analysis and allows others to see the unbiased nature of the process.

“We are the most transparent and open agency in state government,” Treasurer Folwell said. “I cannot be prouder of the work done by the staff of the State Health Plan and the bipartisan State Health Plan Board of Trustees. This contract doesn’t change the body or engine of the State Health Plan, it is just a modernization of the transmission. We look forward to Blue Cross finishing their current contract strong and facilitating a seamless transition to Aetna.”