Washington Times - Haslam's Insure Tennessee Health Plan Fails In Legislature

News Article

By Lucas L. Johnson II

Gov. Bill Haslam's proposal to extend health coverage to 280,000 low-income Tennesseans has failed during a special legislative session.

The Senate Health Committee defeated the Republican governor's Insure Tennessee plan Wednesday on a 7-4 vote.

Haslam spent 21 months negotiating a special deal for Tennessee that included market-based elements like vouchers to buy private insurance, co-pays and assurances that the state could pull out of the deal if it ended up being more expensive than expected.

Hospitals pledged to cover the $74 million state share, meaning taxpayers wouldn't be on the hook for extra health insurance costs.

However, opponents of the Insure Tennessee proposal objected to adding to the federal debt by having the state draw down $2.8 billion in federal money under President Barack Obama's health care law.

Republican Sen. Kerry Roberts of Springfield said one of the reasons he voted against the measure is because he wanted to see more details about consequences the state would face if it pulled out of the plan.

"This was a very agonizing decision for everyone on that committee," he said. "Foolish, foolish, foolish. Sad, sad, sad. Sick, sick, sick," said Congressman Steve Cohen (D-9th District) of Memphis in a statement. "This vote is foolish because it leaves $1 billion in federal funds each year on the table that could have helped keep hospitals open, boosted our economy, and improved our citizens' health. This vote is sad because it shows inhumanity and disdain for Tennessee's sick and our poorest citizens in need of health care. And it is sick because some of those Tennesseans will die as a result of this decision. Those who voted "no' today made a foolish, sad, sick and outright wrong decision."

"We are deeply disappointed that the Senate Health Committee rejected a chance to reform a health care system that virtually everyone agrees is broken," said Joe Hall in a statement from Coalition for a Healthy Tennessee. "Governor Haslam presented legislators with a conservative, market-based health insurance plan that Tennessee's health community agreed would improve health outcomes for working Tennesseans, reign in runaway costs and demonstrate that Tennessee could do health reform better than Washington."

Mid-South health facilities that work with the uninsured are devastated by the news that Insure Tennessee was killed. Nearly 16-percent of Shelby County residents are uninsured; 13-percent in Tipton County and 14-percent in Fayette County.

Health centers say Insure Tennessee could have closed a lot of gaps.

"We were hoping the proposals would pass this week and that the outcome of that would be for the first time a significant proportion of the uninsured would have insurance and have coverage and have access to health care," said Antony Sheehan, President of the Church Health Center.

Insure Tennessee failed in the legislature Wednesday. It would have given 280,000 Tennesseans government-funded health coverage. It could have closed a gap for people the Church Health Center works with.

"We focus a lot on people who are working, uninsured people who perhaps work a little too much to get access to TennCare, and of course too little to be able to afford insurance in the marketplace," Sheehan said, who added that health care can cost people in poverty 25-percent of their annual income.

"Certainly it's not just a premium," he said. "Even today in the context of the affordable care act where premiums are more accessible but then there's the copay and then there's the deductible."

Based on their patients, he says people don't want something free; they want something affordable.

"We have a system where people pay," Sheehan said. "People don't get their service free here at the Church Health center but they pay what they can afford. Eighty-nine-percent of our patients pay on time and what they owe."

Wednesday's news may have been a bitter pill, but he says there remains a movement of people searching for new cures for the uninsured.

Sheehan adds Insure Tennessee would have also been a means to cap the rising cost of health care.

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