By: Jaime McCutcheon

WCTI12.com

MOREHEAD CITY, Carteret County –

Carteret Health Care and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina have not been able to reach a new contract, according to BCBSNC. This means Carteret Health Care will become out of network for BCBSNC customers seeking non-emergency care at the hospital in Morehead City.

Carteret Health Care responded with this: “Carteret Healthcare (CHC) is deeply troubled by BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina’s (BCBSNC) announcement [Monday]. The state’s largest insurer has decided to give notice of ending our long-standing relationship effective February 1, 2016. We are disappointed that BCBSNC has chosen to take such a public and aggressive action rather than work collaboratively with us to reach a new, rebalanced agreement.”

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By: Amy Yurkanin

Al.com

11/09/2015

A Birmingham-based judge recently decided to move forward with the Alabama portion of a lawsuit alleging a widespread conspiracy to divide territory and limit competition between Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates nationwide.

U.S. District Court Judge David Proctor issued the order on Oct. 30, which sets out a schedule for the Alabama portion of the lawsuit.

A trial in the case could happen sometime after January 2018, when the parties are set to meet for pretrial conference.

Alabama has the least competitive health insurance market in the country, according to recent studies by the American Medical Association. Blue Cross covers 93 percent of privately insured patients in Alabama, according to the lawsuit.

“It’s significant because it allows us to focus on Alabama and allows us to show how providers are treated worse because of the market concentration,” said Joe Whatley, an attorney representing the plaintiffs suing Blue Cross.

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Judge David Proctor of the Northern District of Alabama issued an order on October 30, 2015 denying the Defendants motion to dismiss, streamlining scheduling issues and setting a January 2018 scheduling conference in preparation for the trial setting. . The order set a trial schedule for the following cases Conway v. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama et al, and American Motor Services Inc. v. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama et al. The case will continue as directed by the Court. Parties were instructed to be ready for pretrial conference in January 2018.

To Read the Order Click the Link Below:

October 30 Order : Denying Motions to Dismiss and Establishing Streamline Scheduling Order

By: The Editorial Board

The New York Times

10/31/2015

In many industries, like airlines, telecommunications, health care and beer, mergers and acquisitions have increased the market power of big corporations in the last several decades. That has hurt consumers and is probably exacerbating income inequality, new research shows.

A recent paper by two economists, Jason Furman and Peter Orszag, says that consolidation might have contributed to the trend of some businesses earning “super-normal returns” that are about 10 times as large as the median returns, up from three times in the early 1990s. This trend may have driven the rise in income inequality by increasing the income of executives and shareholders of those businesses relative to everybody else.

In addition, two finance professors at the University of Southern California estimate that nearly a third of American industries were highly concentrated in 2013, up from a quarter of all industries in 1996, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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