Tenn. to stop extended medicare - 430,000 people left dangling

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB110013660251470976-IVjgYNplaB3oZyqZXqHbaaCm4,00.html

Tennessee to Dissolve
Expanded Medicaid Program


The governor announced plans Wednesday to dissolve Tennessee's expanded Medicaid system and drop 430,000 poor and disabled people from the rolls of the health-care program that has been devouring a large chunk of the state budget.

Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen said Tennessee will instead return to a cheaper, more basic Medicaid program. The move followed months of legal wrangling over the TennCare program, whose $7.8 billion price tag was projected to mushroom in coming years.

-snip-

"It pains me more than I can describe to take this path," Mr. Bredesen said. "This is not what I planned for or what I dreamed about doing as governor."

(Well Phil you could just say no )

-snip-

TennCare provides health care coverage for the poor, uninsured and disabled, covering 1.3 million Tennesseans, or about 22% of the state population. If TennCare is eliminated, some 430,000 of them would be dropped entirely, largely families of the working poor and those whose ailments and high medical bills make them uninsurable. The remaining 900,000 or so would continue to get coverage under basic Medicaid.

-snip-

The Tennessee Justice Center, which has led the court battle against the governor's reforms, said the lawsuits will not go away even if the state rolls back to basic Medicaid.
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america's health care has crashed

don't depend on it

to ohio and the other half to florida.

electoral problem solved!

move across town much less to another state.

we are talking about people here with no health care.

i have been thinking about that concept... moving people to swing states a lot lately. not because i think it is possible, but because it illustrates the absurdity of our system.

we actually could move all (many?) of those people into affordable housing in Florida and Ohio, or anywhere for that matter, with the amount of money spent on democratic candidates election campaigns and 527s.

last figure i saw was 1.8b for all campaigns on both sides excluding 527 spending.

care

just like that area of Wash., D.C. that has no health care for pregnant and delivering women

you, however, didn't see that my point was to expose the pornographic nature of this country's wasteful habits.

I don't want to say more than I know, and if someone knows more, please correct me, but in a nutshell, the TennCare program had turned into a budget eating boondoggle (40% of the state's budget by 2008). Remember that Tennessee is the home of the Frist family -- with medical costs skyrocketing, we couldn't afford it, so Governor Bredesen (D) -- the most honest politician you've never heard of -- tried to contain costs by cutting back items that had been abused, like taxi rides to methadone clinics and money for OTC meds. Bredesen made his fortune in the health-care industry (he's a businessman, not a doctor), so he pretty much knew what he was doing. And it probably would have worked.

Now normally, I'm all for folks taking government to court to force them to do the right thing, but in this case consumer advocates weren't looking at the big picture, and with the court's help, they forced the state to fully fund it or kill it, and the governor had no choice but to kill the whole program. It's a shame, but he's trying to keep the state afloat.

Like I said, as a Tennessee resident, this is my understanding of the situation, but I certainly won't dispute an opposing view.

disabled people afloat. Interesting.

I live in TN also, and Tenncare has had multiple problems from the beginning. At one point, non-TN residents could come across the border and be automatically covered by Tenncare.

Interestingly - the hospital in my town is glad that Tenncare is going away because they don't get reimbursed as much for Tenncare patients as for other patients.

The UT hospital is upset because they know that, while they were not getting as much for Tenncare patients as other insured patients, they were getting something. Now UT will go back to serving all the uninsured that the other hospitals refuse.

Repukes aren't interested in helping THE PEOPLE. They only aim to destroy all democrats. They are trying to do this to Bredesen and the people suffer for it in the end as always. Then come next election, the Tenncare mess will be blamed on Democrats.

It's really sickening that most Repuke politicians treat the issues and concerns of this nation as mere moves in a big fun game. Win-lose all the way. What happened to Win/win?

God, i am so disgusted with politicians....

I knew a woman who used to get taxi rides to her doctor because her husband refused to make the 70-mile round trip drive. He was a healthy, unemployed man in his 30's and could have taken her, if he wanted to . . .

That was a REAL abuse of the system that appalled me.

(This was in CA about seven years ago.)

That's the "MORAL" thing to do!

Assembly, 2 locals - Sen. David Fowler and asshole rep. Chris Clem, have raised hell about this for years and didn't want to change the tax structure in the state to help fund it. A lot of repug voters are whining about this, but I don't know what the hell they thought would happen.