DAY SEVENTY-ONE: Non-Tax Solutions to TennCare Are Ignored by Bredesen.

Tennessee Governor disregards cost-saving remedies to save taxpayers.

(NASHVILLE, August 29, 2005) A rally Saturday called for a legislative special session to reverse the destructive cuts to the TennCare program pursued by the Bredesen Administration. The governor responded that he did not support taxes to solve the TennCare problem.

The governor’s response however, points out the failure of Bredesen to keep his word to fix TennCare. The activists that have occupied the governor’s office for seventy-one days now have questioned Bredesen why many cost-saving proposals and efficiency techniques were never attempted to solve the problems with TennCare.

Without these necessary public discussions, Bredesen instead headed the state on a course of cutting hundreds of thousands from healthcare benefits to reduce the state payment. The devastating results will be seen in cost of human life. 

Although the governor’s cuts will reduce the state of Tennessee’s portion of the state healthcare bill, the cuts will also trigger a loss of $1.2 billion in federal funding. The tremendous loss of resources will cost Tennessee over 14,000 jobs and cannot be considered “saving” money. Although some state funding is cut, Tennessee taxpayers will see an increase as healthcare is shifted to local and county hospitals and clinics.

“A woman called today crying so hard, she must have been crying for hours before she called,” said Stan Davidson occupying the governor’s office. “I suspect we will start seeing a larger clump of deaths through this period (three weeks into the cuts) as people begin to run out of their medications.”

Advocates are asking lawmakers to use a special legislative session to examine the options that the governor has ignored. For example, Tennessee has no real option to nursing homes. Nursing homes are the most-expensive and least desirable form of long-term care. Do you want to live in an institution when you could stay it your own home at a third of the cost.

Other states are using home and community services to provide necessary services to keep citizens in the workplace and their homes. This is a huge saving to the state, but Tennessee is dominated by the lobbies of the Nursing Home industry that works to keep the public funding flowing. The simple option of Money Follows the Person allows someone to “spend” their long-term care funding in the community, rather than waste it in a facility. The idea is budget-neutral in that it costs nothing, but can result in huge savings for the state as well as more satisfied citizens that may continue to pay taxes.

-Tim Wheat