TennCare (Memphis, Clinton: health insurance, bankruptcy, deductible)

[MomsTn]

Could someone tell me what TennCare is?

[Milo Bloom]

It's Tennessee's version of Medicaid, in a nutshell.

[MomsTn]

Originally Posted by Milo Bloom

It's Tennessee's version of Medicaid, in a nutshell.

thanks,
Was reading in the Tennessean, and didn't have a clue what that was.

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by TNBound

Could someone tell me what TennCare is?

This is a timely post. There is a very negative opinion piece on TennCare on the Yahoo News Opinion section of Yahoo's website. The title of the news opinion article is "Governor Schwarzenegger Should Go to Nashville."

The gist of the article is the TennCare program has forced many hospitals out of business, thousands of doctors and other health care professionals were forced out of the state, the competitive health insurance market was destroyed, TN healthcare suffered and it nearly drove the state government into bankruptcy.

During 2000, TennCare proved to be a disaster (private companies dropped their insurance coverage of at-risk people figuring let the government pick them up). In a short time, one quarter of TN was on TennCare. Fraud was rampant. Financial savings didn't materialize. It got so bad that the politicians were pitching an income tax for Tennessee.

That's when the good citizens of Tennesee revolted. Starting early in the morning, they took their vehicles to the state capital and blasted their horns in protest, throughout the day and into the night. The income tax debate ended. Budget shotfalls were patched with temporary measures.

The writer says that current governor Phil Bredesen has been forced to dismantle TennCare a little at a time because TennCare is still stressing the the state budget.

[rescue1]

Tenn-care was the pilot program known as Hillary care. It was the socialist health care program that the Clintons wanted for the country. Yes it did almost bankrupt the state.

[dreamofmonterey]

It almost bankrupted the state? Then NYC should be bankrupt due to Medicaid as well. Please cite some articles with other sources.

[Dd714]

Originally Posted by rescue1

Tenn-care was the pilot program known as Hillary care. It was the socialist health care program that the Clintons wanted for the country. Yes it did almost bankrupt the state.

Yeah but it gave politicians like Harold Ford Sr. a way to get rich via vendor graft and bribery, that was until he got busted. It is a program ripe with corruption and waste...and that, people, is what happens when the government gets involved in big business.

[JMT]

Originally Posted by sunnyhelena

It almost bankrupted the state? Then NYC should be bankrupt due to Medicaid as well. Please cite some articles with other sources.

If NY isn't bankrupt it's only because its taxes are outrageously higher than Tennessee's.

The media in Tennessee was full of articles quoting Governor Bredesen (a Democrat who made his fortune in the health care industry) and other politicians, doctors, health care industry executives, saying TennCare was overwhelming the state coffers. Some hospitals even quit accepting TennCare patients altogether because the state had so little money to pay for it; the hospitals were going broke. One of the umbrella groups for TennCare (I think the name was something like Access MedPlus, it was based out of Memphis) went bankrupt, leaving thousands of people, mainly in the Memphis area, without any health care at all.

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by sunnyhelena

It almost bankrupted the state? Then NYC should be bankrupt due to Medicaid as well. Please cite some articles with other sources.

TennCare is not the TennCare now that it was in 1994 and 2000 when an income tax was proposed to pay for it but it is still very costly for the State.

You don't have to believe the opinion article, you can read it on the Tennessee Governor's website:

http://www.tennesseeanytime.org/governor/Tenncare.do

where it says, "the unchecked growth of TennCare, the most expansive public health insurance program in the country, is the clear and present danger to the State’s fiscal stability."

...and that's after criteria was changed, benefits were reduced and people were trimmed off the rolls (again, according to the Governor's website).

If you want to read the original article "Governor Schwartenegger Should Go To Nashville" you can do a Google search on TennCare and go to the 4th page of results. The Governor and the article writer are pretty much saying the same thing, it's just the article writer starts from the beginning of the TennCare program to provide background on the start-up of the program (to warn Schwartenegger).

Governor Bredesen is pretty much talking about where the program stands now (since 2004).

The revolt against a possible state income tax? There are photos. Try Tennessee Tax Revolt as your search term. Then click on Income Tax Protest Pictures Summer 2001/2002.

[Siberia]

Free healcare for the poor is a great moral idea...unfortunatley moral decisions don't often equate to logical, financial ones.

Every state and future federal plans will inevitably fail, unless the real issue in healthcare is fixes very soon...cost controls...

Logical thinking Americans cringe at the sound of "Socialist Healthcare"...as they understand that throwing freshly printed worthless USA dollars into the huge black hole that American Health Care has become...no amount will ever be great enough to stop the invisible monster...

And to consider the matter just a fact of paying doctors less, less profits to hospitals, and more taxes on "duuuh rich..aka middle class american working their asses off with duel 60 hour job/week incomes"....is just plain reckless. The healthcare issue is not simply a black and white one...ther are many shades of grey. For example, lawsuit insurance for doctors is out of control and sucking way up to half their profits, non-for profit hospitals only make 2-4 percent maximum profit per year (yes arnold...4% tax on hospitals will bankrupt the non-for profits taking care of the illegals that don't have healthcare insurance...great idea!).....and the fact that non-insured are actually paid by the those with insurance (yes, your rates are 30% higher...thanks for your non-deductible donation to the poor!)....these sort of real life issues are not even addressed by the current, and future proposed national and state "socialized healthcare" proposals.


IMHO...the healthcare issue is so immense, so huge, and so emotionally and politically tied into knots...only a complete collapse of the current system will fix the issue long term. Until them, better keep saving your pennies as there is a really good chance that when the current system collapses, you will need to fund your own expenses as anyone with more that a few thousand in the bank will immediately be considered part of "the rich"...

Siberia