Federal health care reforms are triggering dramatic changes in the health insurance arena. David W. Anderson is president and chief executive officer of HealthNow New York, parent company of BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York. He assumed the duties about six months ago. Anderson sat down with The Buffalo News Brian Meyer.

Meyer: Discuss the early impacts of Obamacare.

Anderson: The early phases for us started about 2 years ago. The market effect phases that were seeing now, which is mostly centered around the exchanges, are just coming up to the market now ... We are on the exchanges in both Western and Eastern New York. We have seen some new enrollment. Fortunately, the New York exchange models have worked pretty well by comparison to some of the federal exchange models ... But really, its just a little bit early to know just how its going to play out.

Meyer: You see insurers who have not been in this market before. More competition. How do you think thats going to affect the big insurers the ones who have had a real hold on this marketplace?

Anderson: Any market like ours welcomes competition. I think that, in the end, it is good for all of us and makes us better companies. The competition has really only existed on the exchange for the new entrants ... We have seen actually an increase [of more than 2,100] in our enrollment through the exchanges ... So I think that our experience as one of the longer-term players in the market is that we are getting more than our fair share.

Meyer: Talk about the challenge of walking the line between trying to control costs and preserve or perhaps even enhance services.

Anderson: Theres an interesting phenomenon in health care. And that is that higher quality almost always actually saves money. One of the things that were working with is how do we connect in a more effective way to increase the quality of care. To help eliminate unnecessary and duplicative care, such that we can control the costs that way.

Meyer: People are worried. You look at health care costs. Virtually every year, those costs are higher than the rate of inflation.

Anderson: And that process is not sustainable. Part of the reason the conversations [that were having with health providers] are happening ... is because it is known that unless we can get medical costs inflation down to a normalized rate of the rest of our economy, that its simply not sustainable. And that is the sole purpose of redefining the relationships between us and the health care providers.

Meyer: Looking ahead over the next year ... what kind of [rate] projections are we looking at?

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HealthNow’s David W. Anderson discusses changes in the health insurance arena