Oct 14, 2026 · 7 min · 7 segments
Lisa Price joins Michelle Crouch, a reporter with North Carolina Health News to talk about her article "NC treasurer: Atrium affordability program could bankrupt state employees’ health plan."
This was a wonderful article, and I see, you know, in the preface of your article, you talk about the restraining order that was filed, and a decision came down yesterday it looks like on that.
Would you like to go into that, or do you want me to briefly explain what decision that came down to?
Well, yeah, basically the judge yesterday sided with Atrium in, in this dispute between the state health plan, um, and, and Atrium.
And so there are still some claims that, um, the state health plan has pending, so I'm expecting more court action to happen, but for right now, um, Atrium's program that we wrote about remains in place.
So you reported, though, that the treasurer has gone to court, like you said, to stop Atrium's new affordability program.
So what, what is the basic disagreement that the treasurer has with Atrium? 'Cause I thought they had kinda come to a, you know, nice understanding, or at least the governor and Atrium had.
So, um, well, the treasurer and Atrium, they've been fighting publicly for a few months now.
Um, and this most recent dispute started when Atrium announced this affordability program for state employees, and what it basically does is it drastically reduces what they would pay out of pocket to see Atrium's doctors.
So while an individual state employee might pay less to go see an Atrium doctor, he says the whole plan could end up paying more, a lot more, something like $100 million more next year.
And now he's saying he might have to raise insurance premiums for everyone to cover those costs.
This was a wonderful article, and I see, you know, in the preface of your article, you talk about the restraining order that was filed, and a decision came down yesterday it looks like on that.
Would you like to go into that, or do you want me to briefly explain what decision that came down to?
Well, yeah, basically the judge yesterday sided with Atrium in, in this dispute between the state health plan, um, and, and Atrium.
And so there are still some claims that, um, the state health plan has pending, so I'm expecting more court action to happen, but for right now, um, Atrium's program that we wrote about remains in place.
So you reported, though, that the treasurer has gone to court, like you said, to stop Atrium's new affordability program.
So what, what is the basic disagreement that the treasurer has with Atrium? 'Cause I thought they had kinda come to a, you know, nice understanding, or at least the governor and Atrium had.
So, um, well, the treasurer and Atrium, they've been fighting publicly for a few months now.
Um, and this most recent dispute started when Atrium announced this affordability program for state employees, and what it basically does is it drastically reduces what they would pay out of pocket to see Atrium's doctors.
So while an individual state employee might pay less to go see an Atrium doctor, he says the whole plan could end up paying more, a lot more, something like $100 million more next year.
And now he's saying he might have to raise insurance premiums for everyone to cover those costs.
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