Here’s video on the unusual tangent N.C. Department of Health and Human Services Aldona Wos went on earlier this week in which she called government transparency “dangerous” during a press conference about contracting out the state’s Medicaid services.

Wos, as mentioned in the News & Observer’s Under the Dome blog yesterday, was asked by Rose Hoban of North Carolina Health News about how open the department would be if private companies were given large chunks of the state’s $13 billion Medicaid program. The department had spelled out a way for companies to declare business plan information exempt from public records requests in the Feb. 4 request for information the public agency put out asking how to change Medicaid.

“The word transparency can get pretty dangerous,” Wos said at Wednesday’s press conference.

Wos told gathered reporters that her department needed to have drafts of proposals shielded from public view while developing policies as a way of working. The state’s public records law, however, makes government documents public “regardless of physical forms and characteristics” and open to inspection “as promptly as possible” to whoever asks to see them.

She also made reference to her upbringing in Poland, and said her experience living under socialism and other forms of government made her a proponent of transparency.

The resolution introduced by two Republican state legislators, and backed by a dozen colleagues, effectively died in the House of Representatives today.

The “Rowan County Defense of Religion Act of 2013” proposed making Rowan County in central North Carolina free of First Amendment constraints, establishing a state religion and making North Carolina immune from federal courts’ rulings on constitutional issues. (Read more here.) The lawmakers wanted to show support to Rowan County Commissioners, who are being sued by the ACLU of North Carolina for invoking sectarian prayer during meetings.

After earning North Carolina some more time in the national spotlight, the bill was put to rest today by Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis, according to this report from the Associated Press and WTVD.

N.C. Policy Watch’s own Chris Fitzsimon wrote this morning about how the bill’s real significance was not the outlandish ideas it floated, but that it got support from a dozen legislators, including a member of House leadership.

Rowan County Defense of Religion by ncpolicywatch

On the very same day Gov. Pat McCrory announced a plan to privatize and restructure the state’s Medicaid system, the state’s senior Republican senator was at an event praising the current model.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr was in Winston-Salem today to present Community Care of North Carolina with an award from the Healthcare Leadership Council, a national group of health care chief executive officers.

Awarded presented Wednesday to CCNC. From left, Sen. Richard Burr, D-N.C.; CCNC President Dr. Allen Dobson, Mary R. Grealy, president HLC; and Dr. Tom Sibert, COO for Wake Forest Baptist Health.
Source: HLC

Burr and the group wanted to “recognize the public-private partnership’s quality and efficiency in serving the state’s Medicaid population and particularly the high quality of care it delivers to patients in rural areas,” according to a press release from HLC.

The North Carolina-based CCNC has become a national model for its delivery of Medicaid services, which relies on networks of doctors to treat patients and reduces overall health care costs by encouraging preventative and ongoing health care instead of expensive emergency room visits.

Burr’s event in Winston-Salem was on the same day the state’s new Republican governor was in Raleigh to introduce a plan to privatize Medicaid, the “Partnership for a Healthy North Carolina.”

Gov. Pat McCrory and N.C. Health and Human Services Sec. Aldona Wos at Tuesday’s press conference.

McCrory was in Raleigh to announce that he and his Health and Human Services Secretary Aldona Wos want to reform the state’s “broken Medicaid system” by bidding out the state’s Medicaid program to managed care companies.

If CCNC wants to stay on as a part of McCrory and Wos’ new plan, it will have to submit a bid along with other companies interested in contracting with the state.

Wos said she hopes to put request for bids out in early 2014, if the proposal gets backing from the state legislature and federal Medicaid officials.

Click here to read more about McCrory’s proposal.