MEDICAID Governor plans to end TennCare

The program's price has hurt the state budget.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Tennessee's expanded Medicaid system will be replaced with a cheaper, more basic program, leaving 430,000 poor and disabled people without coverage, the governor said.
Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen announced plans Wednesday to dissolve TennCare, the health-care program that has been devouring a large chunk of the state budget.
The move followed months of legal wrangling over TennCare, whose $7.8 billion price was projected to mushroom in coming years.
The governor held out some hope for saving the program, saying he will try for seven more days to work out an agreement with advocates who have won several court decisions about the level of health care the state must provide to TennCare recipients. But he said such a deal is unlikely.
"It pains me more than I can describe to take this path," he said. "This is not what I planned for or what I dreamed about doing as governor."
An attorney for the Medicaid recipients was also pessimistic about a last-minute deal and accused the first-term governor of making advocates into "scapegoats."
Coverage
TennCare provides health-care coverage for the poor, uninsured and disabled, covering 1.3 million Tennesseans, or about 22 percent 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.
"Going back to a Medicaid plan will have a catastrophic effect on thousands of Tennesseans who will no longer have health-care coverage," said C.E. "Mickey" Bilbrey, president and chief executive of University Health System.
Almost all states offer some supplemental Medicaid benefits, but Bredesen has said Tennessee has been more generous than other states. Bredesen ran for governor two years ago on a promise to either fix or end TennCare.
In the past, all TennCare participants had unlimited doctor visits and prescriptions.
Bredesen has proposed a stripped-down TennCare plan that would limit 270,000 of the recipients to only 12 doctor visits and 45 days in the hospital each year, and six prescriptions a month. But advocacy groups have challenged that plan in court, and Bredesen said that unless they back off, TennCare will have to be abandoned entirely.