Say Anything Blog

Recently North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm blasted Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota for sending some of its personnel on sales trips to tropical locations.  Now, given how quickly Blue Cross Blue Shield has raised its rates over the last few years, given how much strain that puts on North Dakota citizens and given how BCBS enjoys a near monopoly in health insurance in the state it’s not surprising to see a bit of backlash over this. 

Hamm taking advantage of it is just politics.

But it’s not the sort of politics a Republican should be engaging in.  In the current atmosphere BCBS sending its people on luxury trips is just bad PR, but as a private company they should be allowed to compensate their employees as they want.  I suspect that BCBS, having canceled these trips in the face of Hamm’s criticism, will simply replace the trips as compensation with bonuses payments or something like that.  And all will be well again.

Hamm should have kept his mouth shut about the trips.  If Hamm, as someone who is ostensibly a Republican, really wants to address the problems with BCBS he should act like a conservative and look at some of the government interventions in the state insurance industry that prop up BCBS’ market share.

I look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the national level.  Those government sponsored entities, at the time of the housing collapse, owned or secured 51% of the mortgages in America’s $12 trillion mortgage market.  There is no way they could have attained that level of market dominance without government intervention.

The same is true of BCBS, I think.  According to BCBS’ own website they insurance 475,000 people in North Dakota either directly or through administrative agreements.  That’s roughly 75% of the population of the state.

That sort of market share makes me uncomfortable.  It’s hardly the sort of thing that results from free market competition.  That’s what Hamm should be addressing.