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TennCare faces deep budget cuts
When Tennessee launched its ideal of free health care for needy residents, the worry about how to pay for medical tests, drugs, surgeries or nursing care vanished for many people.The relief didn't last long. Gov. Phil Bredesen, who came into office in 2003 promising to "save" and "not dismantle" TennCare, has managed to keep it alive. But he has moved at least 300,000 people off the program rolls, limited the most expensive home care and made it tougher to get on TennCare in the first place. Still, the program is expected to consume about 24 percent of the state finances under Bredesen's budget proposal next year,a drop from the ballooning 30 percent when he took office, but a long way from the years before TennCare when, state lawmakers remember, they dedicated about 10 percent of the budget to health care. Now Bredesen, in his last year of office, has proposed another round of reductions that have so awakened the medical community that hospitals are suggesting taxing themselves as a political alternative. Bredesen has driven this TennCare road before. When opponents suggested life-and-death consequences and even filed lawsuits against the state over previous changes, he moved forward anyway. His critics say he has run the program too much like a CEO rather than an elected official administering a public health plan. "This governor's approach has been, 'I will make cuts and fix the program later,' " said Tony Garr, executive director of the Tennessee Health Care Campaign, an advocacy group. "He forgets that he is not running a private business." Others say it's easy to second-guess the governor, but if he hadn't pushed forward with changes, TennCare could be absorbing up to 50 percent of all the tax money coming into the state. Posted by: Fred 2010-02-15 |
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