Letter: Make health insurance more affordable, transparent; Wake up to woke

The climbing cost of healthcare has been a leading concern for American families for years. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in two U.S. adults admit they have difficulty affording health care costs, and 44 percent worry about affording their deductible before health insurance kicks in.

In North Carolina, the situation surrounding health insurance is especially dire. Skyrocketing premiums are further exacerbated by a lack of transparency and claim denial rates higher than the national average. As the legislature continues their session, it is time to address these problems and institute guardrails for payors to protect consumers.

The shortcomings of health insurance affect the livelihood of real people and real families. In 2020, more than 2.9 million claims were denied in North Carolina from insured patients who received care from an in-network provider, money patients didn't plan for and weren't expecting to have to spend on needed care.

At the same time, the North Carolina Department of Insurance reports that Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina — our state's dominant insurer — saw a 118 percent increase in profit in 2021 but still sought to boost individual premiums by 10 percent. Though they were unsuccessful in achieving the full increase, BCBSNC increased patients' premiums by 2.8 percent each month.

I understand that businesses have the right to charge for services, but this monopoly from our state's largest insurer, in conjunction with claim denials and high premiums, has resulted in reduced access and greater risk in cumbersome medical debt for North Carolinians. And more money spent on health insurance coverage means less money flowing into our local economies.

We cannot afford to continue down this path. The current condition of health insurance in North Carolina is unsustainable and needs reform. I urge the General Assembly to act in the interest of families and consider new protections to make health insurance more affordable, transparent, and easier

Bill Brown

Greenville

Wake up to woke

I recently wrote that I finally saw the forest for the trees. But that is too inadequate to describe today's culture, whether American or global. It actually reduces itself to good vs. evil.

"Good" meaning what is positive and beneficial to each individual while recognizing each other's differences, and who/what is to oversee that relationship. "Evil" is those forces that take away human dignity and compel the individual to subject his/her rights and behaviors to the perpetuation of that entity (governments, institutions, religions, corporations, despots) not humanity.

Conservative, traditionalist culture seems in head-on collision with a woke culture that rose in the early part of the 21st century. Seemingly bent on "correcting" the social ills of the traditionalists, the woke objective is to force "tolerance and equity" as bromide, even if it means violently erasing/destroying the age-old conservative, Judeo-Christian beliefs of America's past 400-plus-year history.

"The government knows best" is at the heart of wokism. The individual is subject to what the government decrees can be read, spoken and used for protection, with no respect for the law of the land, our Constitution. Duplicity of thought and hypocrisy of behavior is their modus operandi. And if you challenge their authority, you are the terrorist, the villain. Don't defend yourself or your property; you'll become the aggressor.

To me, all of this is blatantly obvious to the point that everyone can say, "Yes, that's how I feel, too."

But doesn't that make you uncomfortable, disturbed? If it goes against how you were brought up, why have you not done anything about it? It has been the sand in my swim trunks for five decades. So now I am flushing my trunks and admonishing the reader to wake up to woke. Resist it, renounce it, decry it, or it will seduce/subdue you.

John R. Cleary

Winterville