Over at WABE (90.1FM) on Thursday, Denis O’Hayer offered up an interview with Morgan Kendrick, president of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Georgia, the only health insurance carrier offering policies in all 16 areas of the state under the new, federally mandated exchanges.

“We understand the business is shifting, and we want to be part of that change,” Kendrick said. “We certainly believe there is a cost problem with health care. We believe there’s a problem with the number of uninsured in Georgia.”

Asked about the roll-out of the Internet marketplace, the Blue Cross/Blue Shield chief said he wasn’t put off by the widely noted glitches:

“I think it’s going how we expected it to go. Anything this big, with this much change at one time, is going to have challenges. …I’ve heard that people have got through. I have heard that brokers have sold product on the exchange. So there is activity. But you know, we were expecting the challenges and the glitches. There’s a lot of infrastructure build-out that was required on the carrier side as well as the government side.”

Kendrick said he had no specific reports on the number of policies sold. He also declined to offer any criticism of state Republican officials for their reluctance to spread the word about the new health care law.

O’Hayer asked the insurance executive what would happen if the Affordable Care Act was indeed defunded, as House Republicans are demanding. Said Kendrick:

“That’s an interesting question. The president has been very clear. He’s not going to do this. …It would certainly be a challenge to unwind that. However, that’s certainly not a situation I’m anticipating, one where it’s unfunded or defunded.”

State Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens has said that two of the five insurance companies participating in Georgia’s exchange have expressed concerns about its economic feasibility. Kendrick said Blue Cross/Blue Shield wasn’t one of them – that he’d had no conversations with Hudgens.

The interview ended with this exchange:

O’Hayer: Did you get a lot of pressure to not take part in this, in order to make it more difficult for the president to make his case?

Kendrick: No, we did not. We did not. We not get any pressure at all to not participate in this.

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Another sign that the latest ethics concerns swirling aroundGov. Nathan Deal will factor into next year's election: School Superintendent John Barge, one of two GOP rivals, vows to "return true ethical transparency" to the ethics commission, which Barge said is "simply not living up to its name as a transparent organization."

Barge’s plan would create a new ethics oversight commission that specifically excludes lobbyists or state employees or contractors from serving on the ethics panel. Members would be appointed by a seven-member commission that would include three Republicans, three Democrats and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

From the proposal he unveiled Thursday:

"These seven people would give us a much more even-handed appointment process that includes representatives of all the people in a bipartisan manner. It would mean that the Governor no longer has direct political control over the Commission. This is important to reestablishing trust in our government officials for all the obvious reasons."

Deal, for his part, has said he'll leave it up to the Legislature to decide whether any changes to the ethics commission are necessary.

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On the topic of ethics complaints, the governor's office confirmed Thursday a noteworthy change.

State Inspector General Deron Hicks is leaving his post Friday to take a job in the private sector. He's to be replaced by his deputy, Deborah Wallace, a veteran who has worked as an investigator with the Navy, the Department of Energy and Tennessee's prison system.

Why is this post so important? The inspector general probes complaints against state agencies and employees. And Hicks told the AJC Wednesday that his office opened a new file related to the Deal investigation after an ethics watchdog filed a complaint.

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The AJC’s Politifact Georgia today takes a look at whether gubernatorial candidate John Barge has differed with School Superintendent John Barge when it comes to Common Core.

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The Board of Regents has been called on the carpet for breeding blood-sucking parasites in spaces other than proper law school classrooms, according to the Augusta Chronicle:

The governing board was cited for an environmental health violation for standing water at the former Georgia Golf Hall of Fame Botanical Gardens site. What were once raised, brick fountains and a cascading, stone waterfall were collecting green and slimy rain water.

According to a letter dated Wednesday to the Board of Regents, an inspection this week discovered the water features were not operating, holding stagnant water and breeding mosquitoes.