Fred Earley joins Bowles Rice health care team
PARKERSBURG — The former head of Highmark West Virginia is bringing his experience in the healthcare field to a new position as an attorney with Bowles Rice.
Fred Earley joins Bowles Rice’s Health Care Team with nearly 30 years of experience in the health care and insurance industries, having served as president of Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield West Virginia since 2009 and having worked with the company since 1989. He stepped down as President in November 2016.
“I had been president at Highmark for over seven years,” Earley said. “It felt like it was the time for me to make a change.
“I had been with the company for a long time, almost 28 years. Having said that, I wasn’t completely ready to ride off in the sunset. I felt there were still some things I would want to stay engaged with and perhaps play a role in how things could grow and develop in West Virginia.”
He had always kept his law license up-to-date and began conversations with people in the firm about coming on in some capacity which appealed to him.
“It had been awhile since I had practiced law,” Earley said. “I have always maintained my license.
“It seemed like a very natural fit.”
Earley did hold the title of General Counsel at Highmark.
With Bowles Rice, Earley will serve as special counsel with his areas of focus being health care law and government relations.
“Those tie directly into the things I was doing at Highmark,” he said. “Whether it is health insurance or health care in general, that was the business on which I focused on for almost three decades.”
A lot he did at Highmark also involved external relations and government relations. Earley worked on various task forces working with a number of government agencies.
“I had relationships that were legislative or administrative that came with the territory of being with Highmark and the position it held within the marketplace in West Virginia,” Earley said.
Bowles has a significant clientele that includes hospitals and physician groups, entities within the health care community. Highmark is also a client.
Earley is remaining on the Board of Directors with Highmark.
“I am looking forward to continuing that relationship, but in a different way,” Earley said.
Earley believes his legal work will cover a variety of topics including the changing of the Affordable Care Act if it is repealed and replaced or changed some other way and helping people sort through that.
“Being in my former position as president of Highmark during the implementation of the Affordable Care Act , my tenure there coincided with that,” he said. “The Affordable Care Act is the overwhelming issue. Things are clearly going to change and evolve.”
A lot of what he may deal with remains to be seen as how the law may be repealed and what it might be replaced with.
“As we start to navigate those waters and begin to sort through the things that are coming about, clearly there is a lot of inner relationships that exist with some of the provisions that people like and some they are not quite as satisfied with,” Earley said.
If lawmakers take out one piece, it could impact others.
The key will be they have to be conscious not to cause more harm than intended.
Although there have been difficulties, the number of people covered nationally as well as West Virginia have been fairly remarkable.
“It has been fraught with difficulties with cost being one of those,” Earley said. “The true misnomer about the Affordable Care Act was the affordable part.
“Obvious the cost of the coverage under the Affordable Care Act for the marketplace has continued to skyrocket. That has been somewhat mitigated by the subsidies available to people based on their income level. People not receiving subsidies is extremely high, approaching its capacity of being a sustainable program.”
Work needs to be done to get costs under control.
“There are a number of entities who will be interested in seeing how that will work and how it may impact things within the state when they are being looked upon from a national level,” Earley said. “There may be a role for me to be involved in that depending on how things come about.
“The level of experience I have already had in there, spending the bulk of my career in that field. Particularly over the last seven years being president it will be very valuable experience in that regard.”
Earley wants to continue to help West Virginia as it deals with a number of issues.
“I was born and raised here,” he said. “It is where we have raised our children.
“There are still great opportunities in West Virginia. West Virginia is obviously facing tremendous challenges , but at the same time there are still great opportunities here for the state.”
Under any robust or developing economy, the healthcare delivery model has to be a part of it, because that is an infrastructure that companies look for just as much as educational opportunities for wanting to bring and develop business here and bringing jobs to the state, Earley said. Rural hospitals are facing tremendous financial challenges and the growth of the Medicaid market in the state has provided some benefit. If there are substantial changes around that equation of how people are covered or whether they are covered could impact that substantially, he added.
“Rural healthcare in general, particularly in West Virginia because so much of the state is rural, faces a unique set of challenges,” he said. “The whole idea of providing health insurance and health coverage for people and making it somewhat affordable, especially for people who don’t have coverage through their employers is going to be a very significant area of discussion and debate, moving forward over the next several months and even years as that continues to change.
“Change has to occur, whether you are a proponent or opponent of the Affordable Care Act and the reform that came with that, people have to recognize that things have to change in some way for it to be sustainable.”
The trick will be how to enact and create some of those changes without causing more harm than good.
Earley thinks he can offer some insight into that and be able to provide some input and guidance to those who are trying to understand it as it is being addressed on a federal level.
He is looking forward to the challenge.
“I like to think I will be able to provide some value in how that continues to develop in West Virginia,” Earley said. “If there are some things I can do to help to continue to move the state forward, I am looking forward to being involved in that, not only in Parkersburg but throughout the state.”
Earley feels Bowles Rice is a great firm and has a great reputation in the state and beyond in a variety of areas with health law being one of them.
“I know it is clearly an area of practice and growth that is going to be important to the firm,” he said. “I am prepared to play a role in that and hopefully we can continue to grow and show successes for West Virginia and the firm in doing so.”