Rep. Pricey Harrison has asked for an investigation into Blue Cross and Blue Shield's campaign against the public option health care proposal.

Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat, has asked the Attorney General and N.C. Department of Insurance to look into whether the insurer violated the state's do-not-call registry with a robocall and whether it is proper for the insurer to use premiums to pay for mailers, reports Mark Binker of the Greensboro News & Record.

"We are a fully taxed medical services and hospital corporation," Borman said, adding that the company paid $162 million in federal, state and local taxes last year.

However, the fact the company paid taxes does not make it a for-profit company, said Adam Searing, a health policy expert with liberal-leaning advocacy group The North Carolina Justice Center.

"They are a nonprofit organization," Searing said. "They are organized under a special part of the nonprofit corporation law in North Carolina. They have a nonprofit board."

The N.C. Justice Center says that tax increases approved by the legislature this year are likely to prevent job losses in the private and public sectors.

The Center issued a release on a new report that contends that the popular notion that tax increases will lead to job losses is not true.

The report says that without the tax increases, deeper cuts would have been made in state services such as education.

"Those cuts certainly would have caused job losses in both the private and public sectors, while credible research concludes the revenue increases likely will not negatively impact the job market," reads the report.

The report says that North Carolina's tax increases are equal to a small fraction of the state's economy and do not put North Carolina out of line with taxes in other states. As a result, the report says, the tax increases should not put North Carolina at a competitive disadvantage with other states when it comes to jobs.

Finally, the report says that a comparable set of tax increases by North Carolina in 2001 did not have a negative impact on the state's economy.

The report concluded:

Taking a balanced approach to addressing the budget shortfall allowed the state to avoid major setbacks in public programs and avoid laying off tens of thousands of state workers, which would have had negative effects on the state economy.

Update: Well, it didn't take long for the other side to chime in. The folks at the Civitas Institute have posted a response to what they call a "bizarro-world 'analysis."

The Civitas post says the Justice Center report "does nothing to bolster its claim that higher taxes have no effect on job growth. Any basic Econ 101 theory will describe how job and economic growth is based largely upon the accumulation and investment of new capital and the proper incentive structure."

The post says that increasing taxes reduces the amount of capital available for invements and "destroys the incentives for entrepreneurs to engage in productive investment."

E-mail Lesson #27: If you are going to forward a YouTube video, watch it first.

An administrative aide to state Rep. Laura Wiley learned the hard way, after she sent out a video critical of President Barack Obama featuring pictures of German SS officers at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp, Joe Neff reports.

The email, sent from a General Assembly e-mail account, eventually landed in the inbox of Adam Searing, the director of the Health Access Coalition at the N.C. Justice Policy Center.

Searing, an advocate for affordable and universal health care, said he was offended for professional and personal reasons.

"My great uncle on my mom's side — Everett Peterson — died on Omaha Beach on June 6th 1944 in Normandy fighting those guys in the photos," Searing said. "He didn't die so that 65 years later somebody could equate the evil he fought and defeated with a policy proposal to expand health coverage."

More after the jump.

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Officials with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina and the State Health Plan say there's no need to call for an audit of a contract between the two for administrative services.

They note that the State Auditor is in the midst of a performance audit of the plan, which would likely include a contract review, Dan Kane reports.

"A Performance Audit of the State Health Plan by the State Auditor is currently underway," plan spokeswoman Linda McCrudden said. "Once completed and released, the audit report will be available to the public."

Adam Searing of the N.C. Justice Center's Health Access Coalition, one of two groups that called for the audit, said he is aware there is a state audit under way, but the groups are calling for something different.

"We want something done pretty quickly — I don't know where the state auditor is — and we want something that focuses directly on this contract process (by) someone who really understands in depth the whole contracting process among health plans and employers," Searing said.

Moare after the jump.

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The State Employees Association of North Carolina and the N.C. Justice Center's Health Access Coalition today called for an independent audit of the State Health Plan's contract to administer claims.

Both groups also want the state to submit the contract to open bidding. Legislation passed in 2005 allowed the health plan to bypass the open bid laws to select a company to administer a new Preferred Provider Organization option, Dan Kane reports.

The plan then awarded the contract to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. Another law so far has been interpreted to keep many of the contract's details under wraps.

On Saturday, The News & Observer reported that Blue Cross received $97.5 million in the 2007-2008 fiscal year for administering the PPO plan and a second plan that is being phased out at the end of this year. Blue Cross processed 9.4 million claims, which means the company received more than $10 per claim.

Electronic Data Systems, the company handling claims for Medicaid, is receiving 57 cents per claim from the state.

More after the jump.

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The benefits of requiring paid sick days for workers would offset the costs by improving public health and employee retention, supporters of state legislation that would require such time said this morning.

A House bill would make employers provide up to seven days of paid sick time per year so that workers can tend to illness without fear of losing income, Jonathan Cox reports.

Forty-two percent of workers in North Carolina, or 1.6 million people, lack such a benefit, according to numbers provided by the N.C. Justice Center, which advocates for the poor and is pushing for passage of the legislation.

"Everyone gets sick," said Rep. Alma Adams, a Guilford County Democrat and primary sponsor of the legislation. "Unfortunately, not everyone has a fair chance to get better."

Employers, though, say that imposing such a mandate would cause an onerous burden, especially during the grips of severe recession.

"Small businesses are struggling so much right now," said Gregg Thompson, state director for the National Federation of Independent Business. "That additional expense could be very damaging."

Two-thirds of North Carolina's uninsured children already qualify for state health plans.

According to figures compiled by Action for Children N.C., a child health advocacy group, 177,000 uninsured children in the state come from families earning below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or less than $41,300 for a family of four.

That means they already should be covered by either Medicaid or Health Choice, two health care plans for low-income children paid for with state and federal dollars.

The state already promotes both programs at hospitals, schools and state agencies, but many parents fail to sign up. Others don't qualify. Children who immigrated illegally cannot receive benefits, while those who immigrated legally still must wait five years to sign up.

Adam Searing, project director for the N.C. Justice Center's Health Access Coalition, said the state can't afford to cover all those children anyway, unless Congress provides more money for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which funds Health Choice.

"All those kids could sign up, but we don't have the money available," he said.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Administration for Children and Families will announce a program Tuesday to educate agencies and individuals about human trafficking in North Carolina and across the country.

The federal department estimates that 14,500-17,500 people are trafficked into the United States every year, reports Barb Barrett.

Several high-profile cases have come up in North Carolina in recent years, including a sex ring in the Triangle and a legal suit filed by 22 Thai farm workers from Johnston County earlier this year.

The federal program comes alongside an ongoing statewide coalition that has been working several years to train social services and law enforcement agencies about how to identify and help trafficking victims.

Read more after jump.

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A coalition of labor and anti-poverty groups criticized the state budget discussions today.

Led by the N.C. Justice Center, more than 40 groups argued that the state should not repeal the "temporary taxes" or use certificates of participation for debt.

At the same time, they said the state should create an earned income tax credit and fund the N.C. Kids' Care program.

The coalition includes ACORN, the N.C. AFL-CIO and the N.C. Association of Educators as well as the the N.C. Housing Coalition, N.C. Fair Share and Working Families Win, among others.

Bill Rowe, head of the N.C. Justice Center, described its proposal as a "can-do budget."