Audio clip
david_eichenthal_0531.mp3
David Eichenthal, Executive Director of the Community Research Council
-Download MP3- By Emily Berry
Staff Writer
Hospitals have absorbed the cost of caring for a larger population of uninsured patients since the removal of numerous people from TennCare in July 2005, and negative economic consequences predicted by some have not materialized, according to a new report.
Issued Wednesday by researchers with the Chattanooga-based nonprofit Community Research Council, the report seeks to describe what happened when nearly 170,000 people lost their health insurance through TennCare.
Erlanger hospital Chief Executive Officer Jim Brexler participated in roundtable discussions that were part of the report. He said he was glad to see a third-party analysis of the effects of the TennCare cuts.
"Everyone that's in the system has their view of the world," he said. "To have a third party come in and look at dimensions of it can be helpful to all of us, not just policy-makers."
The report offers an analysis distinct from either state officials' or enrollee advocates' evaluations of how the cuts to TennCare's rolls affected the people who lost coverage and the broader community, said David Eichenthal, the council's executive director.
"We sort of see our role in this process as that of umpire," he said.
The report, funded by a grant from the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's State Coverage Initiatives, also found that following the disenrollments:
n Many people who lost TennCare were unable to find affordable health insurance from private companies;
n Some disenrollees and those who remained enrolled but with diminished benefits had to choose between buying medications and paying bills, while some shared medications or rationed them to make them last longer;
n More-resourceful disenrollees were able to find help with prescription drugs and primary-care services through the state's safety net, particularly in larger cities;
n About one in three mentally ill disenrollees never signed up for safety-net services sponsored by the state.
In announcing the enrollment cuts in 2005, Gov. Phil Bredesen said they were necessary to keep the program from eating up the state's budget.
Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration Deputy Commissioner Darin Gordon, who heads the TennCare Bureau, called the report "somewhat balanced."
He said he appreciated that the report outlined the financial situation that precipitated the disenrollments but was disappointed that the report made no real mention of the hundreds of thousands of uninsured people across the state who were never enrolled in TennCare.
"The uninsured population is broader than the 170,000 disenrolled," Mr. Gordon said.
Gov. Bredesen had not read the report Wednesday, his press secretary Lydia Lenker said.
"The governor worked to avoid any disenrollments from TennCare but was forced to take more drastic action to prevent TennCare from bankrupting our state," she said in a statement.
Gordon Bonnyman, executive director of the Tennessee Justice Center, an advocacy group that represents TennCare enrollees in federal class action lawsuits, said the report "confirms the warnings of doctors before the cuts were made."
"The state can't cut $1.6 billion of care to tens of thousands of people with cancer, stroke and other deadly diseases without causing serious suffering, and that is what has happened," he said.
E-mail Emily Berry at eberry@timesfreepress.com
