Celebrating its silver anniversary this year, the Working Mother 100 Best Companies initiative has selected Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) as one of the nation's top companies for family-friendly benefits. With 70 percent of mothers working-and women outnumbering men in the workplace for the first time in U.S. history-companies like BCBSNC have been instrumental in supporting their advancement.

“Most of our Blue Advantage and Blue Options HSA customers will see smaller rate increases for 2011,” said BCBSNC President and CEO Brad Wilson. “However, the only way to make premiums affordable over the long term is to get soaring medical costs under control.”

We’ve created nchealthreform.com to help North Carolinians understand the impact of health care reform, and what it means for them,” said Brad Wilson, BCBSNC president and chief executive officer. “At Blue Cross, we’re committed to making the new law work for North Carolina. We’re rolling up our sleeves and working hard to understand what health care reform means for all North Carolinians – those who are Blue Cross customers, and those who are not.”

“A major focus of ours is strengthening and supporting the state’s nonprofit sector,” said Kathy Higgins, BCBSNC Foundation president. “This is a difficult time for many nonprofits, particularly in the Charlotte area. Our goal with this workshop is to provide local organizations with resources to assist them in not just surviving this downward economy, but to also position them so that they might even advance the work they are doing.”

Dr. Don Bradley, senior vice president and chief medical officer at BCBSNC, said at the news conference, “It’s worth every effort to open doors for discussion between doctor, parent and child - to make a difference in the lives of our children, to help them learn the practice of healthier eating habits, good nutrition, and getting more exercise. We’re pleased that our early concepts with our own toolkit contributed to the Good Health Club Physician Toolkit. The toolkit distributed nationally will take the fight against childhood obesity to a new level by providing pediatricians with essential tools to encourage lifelong healthy living habits for America’s youth.”

“Communities across North Carolina work hard to attract quality physicians to provide primary care for our citizens,” said Brad Wilson, chairman of the BCBSNC Foundation. “However, we are already faced with a national shortage of primary care physicians, and the recently passed health care reform legislation will mean an increase in the number of folks seeking care. We hope that through this initiative, North Carolina medical students will receive the help and incentive they need to make a commitment to family medicine.”

Journeying through today’s complex health care payment system can be frustrating, sometimes leading patients to spend their energy dealing with administrative red tape instead of concentrating on what matters most – getting better. Today marks the one year anniversary of a Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) program that enables some of its Triangle-area customers to focus more on their health and less about their paperwork.

“Like others before it, the Navigant audit confirmed that we are living up to our contract with the State Health Plan and providing quality service at a fair price,” said Ian Gordon, senior vice president and chief operations officer at BCBSNC. “Blue Cross earns less than a penny of profit on each dollar we receive to administer the State Health Plan. The price the State pays us to administer the plan has declined during the contract term.”

Last night, Dan Pfeiffer, White House Communications Director, posted a comment on the White House blog congratulating Blue Plans across the country for voluntarily extending coverage of adult children.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) will host a press conference to announce Strive to Revive, an initiative that is making available 20 Automated External Defibrillators (AED) to Charlotte area places of worship. The program is designed to specifically impact houses of worship that serve populations largely at risk of health disparity or poor health outcomes.