DAY FORTY-NINE: King Bredesen

Tennessee Governor pines for tyrannical authority

"If you could make me king, I could go around and say, ‘You’re on, you’re off, you’re on, you’re on.’ We could do a good job that way. We obviously can’t do that, so how do I get the people who it’s not designed for? How do I get them set aside and yet take care of the people who clearly need this? That’s the complicated part of what we’re going through." 

– Governor Phil Bredesen

(NASHVILLE, August 7, 2005) It is not physicians that can best to improve healthcare in Tennessee, it is former insurance baron and want-to-be king, who alone, can best determine life and death for his subjects. Governor Bredesen wishes he had unlimited dictatorial authority in revising TennCare, but “we obviously can’t do that.”

“I cannot believe that anyone would contend that an autocrat ‘could do a good job,’” said a TennCare activist. “It is an insult to democracy, common sense and healthcare in general. We expect the system to be fair and based on medical information not the whim of an megalomaniac.”

Bredesen spoke at a Johnson City meeting with Northeast Tennessee media representatives where he made the statement praising autocratic rule.