NC health secretary on privatizing Medicare: Transparency is 'pretty dangerous'

The Republican North Carolina Department Health and Human Services (DHHS) secretary this week told reporters asking for information about the state's plan to privatize Medicaid that "transparency can get pretty dangerous."

"Already we’re not seeing transparency," North Carolina Health News reporter Rose Hoban pointed out to DHHS Secretary Aldona Wos at a press conference on Wednesday.

"I think the word transparency can get pretty dangerous," Wos explained. “Because what does transparency mean? If transparency means that we’re in a planning process and you’re asking us, ‘Tell us all the things you’re planning,’ well, my goodness, allow us to work, and then we’ll give you everything that you want. But allow us the intellectual capacity just to do our job.”

According to the News & Observer's Under the Dome blog, Wos "did not address why the responses were being kept secret, or why the development of health policy contained elements of danger."

Earlier this month, Republican North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory proposed a sweeping overhaul of the state's Medicaid system, including shifting costs and care to private entities. But the plan has raised questions about which businesses would be targeted by the reforms and what would happen to the nonprofits that already coordinate services.

Watch this video from WRAL via The Progressive Pulse, uploaded April 5, 2013.

(h/t: The Progressive Pulse)