While North Carolina's largest insurer and one of its biggest providers are locked in public dispute over cost rates, the editorial board of the Asheville Citizen-Times argues that this is not an isolated incident, but instead a symptom of our current healthcare system that can only be fixed through legislative action.
Providers often pass along the cost burden of caring for the uninsured to those with insurance, and Asheville, N.C.-based Mission Health System argues that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina's reimbursement rates are simply not enough to keep them afloat. However, the editorial board of the paper believes that it is the system, and not these two individual actors, that is at fault.
A system that leaves as many people uninsured as it does, and a proposed new system that leaves even more people without coverage, does little to alleviate the inherently antagonistic relationship between insurers and providers.
"The ACA is convoluted. That's because it is built upon a system than already was convoluted....What Congress should be doing is working on ways to make the system simpler and more efficient. Instead, lawmakers are exacerbating a system that sets providers and insurers against each other," the board wrote.
Read more about the Mission Health System and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina dispute here.
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