Ardis Watkins, executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, and North Carolina State Health Plan vice-chairman Brian Miller wrote in a joint op-ed that robust competition “benefits consumers through lower prices and improved quality.” “With North Carolina’s hospital markets already highly concentrated,” they concluded, “officials should regard further mergers with suspicion, especially those hurried through under the cloak of darkness.” Merging UNC and WakeMed would make the Triangle’s hospital market vastly less competitive. North Carolina still makes it too difficult for medical professionals originally licensed in other states to move and practice here without jumping through regulatory hoops. But North Carolina leaders can and should insist on an expansion, not a contraction, of competition.