Gardenhire defends voting down Insure Tennessee plan as protesters hold a vigil

Brian Merritt read the Scripture as loudly as he could, hoping that his voice would penetrate the brick walls where the Hamilton County Pachyderm Club was meeting to eat lunch on Monday.

He read from the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, in which Jesus instructs a rich young ruler to love his neighbor.

"Who is Todd Gardenhire's neighbor?" asked Merritt, who is co-founder of Mercy Junction, a ministry that operates the Justice and Peace Center in Chattanooga.

"It's supposed to be all of us!" replied Sam McKinney.

McKinney is uninsured, and had joined Merritt and a group of protesters who were holding a prayer meeting for others who are uninsured outside the meeting for local Republicans. Inside, Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, sought to justify his controversial decision to vote down Gov. Bill Haslam's Insure Tennessee plan along with fellow Republicans.

Gardenhire, the featured speaker at Monday's meeting, was one of seven Republican legislators to turn back Insure Tennessee this month. He is also one of six of those lawmakers who has state-subsidized insurance through his role as a legislator.

"Ask Gardenhire how he likes his health insurance! The vets would like some, too!" several of the protesters yelled as local Republicans filed into the meeting. "Thanks for helping the poor!"

State senator Todd Gardenhire speaks to the Hamilton County Pachyderm Club during their luncheon in this file photo.

In an hour-long talk, Gardenhire ran through a list of reasons why he voted down the proposal. He said too many questions remained unanswered about the plan -- like at what point it would be halted if it was not working. He also was troubled, he said, by how much hospitals and nursing homes stood to profit from the increase in federal spending.

"Of all the hundreds of emails I got telling me to support this plan, only one was from someone who wasn't going to profit off it," he said. "Nobody was excited about taking care of patients. But they were sure excited about getting the money."

But one Tennessee advocacy group questions that claim. Katie Alexander, a client advocate with the Tennessee Justice Center, said the group had set up an email and call tool so Tennesseans could contact their legislators directly about Insure Tennessee when discussions were ongoing.

"We know that from our tool only, Senator Gardenhire got 23 emails from his constituents in support of Insure Tennessee, and six phone calls," said Alexander, who said 19 of those emails were sent before Insure Tennessee was voted down. "I would be surprised if every single one of those emails was signed by someone who said that they were gaining personal profit from Insure Tennessee."

In his talk, Gardenhire said he was not sympathetic with the hospitals' plea for Medicaid expansion, calling it a "true rural hospital bailout." He pointed to Erlanger Health System's dramatic financial turnaround this year as one reason why hospitals were not as in dire straits as they claimed, and described the Tennessee Hospital Association's offer to help foot the bill for expansion with an assessment fee as a move made "with a wink and a smile."

Ultimately, Gardenhire said, "the numbers just weren't there." A more "sustainable" plan could have been worked out in six to nine months, he said, after the U.S. Supreme Court rules on whether the law allows for tax credits to be used on the federal health exchanges.

"Everybody begged [Haslam] to put it off," he said. The senator described a one-on-one meeting with Haslam before the vote, and said it was "the hardest thing in the world" to tell Haslam that he would not approve the plan.

As Gardenhire spoke, the group with Mercy Junction prayed that he and other public officials would have a change of heart.

"Many of these people with chronic health problems can't afford to wait for the wheels of democracy to turn in another year," said Mercy Junction co-founder Beth Foster. "Because by then many will be dead."

While several protesters had gone inside to hear the talk and ask questions, the president of the Pachyderm Club said afterward that no questions would be allowed because of time constraints. Still, after the meeting, one woman sarcastically thanked the senator for looking out for the interests of the wealthy.

After the meeting, the group sang a retooled version of a classic protest hymn, singing "Insured, and uninsured we shall not be moved."

While Gardenhire did not engage the group of protesters when he walked from the meeting to his car, he said inside that it was their right to be there.

"It's America," he said.

Contact staff writer Kate Belz at kbelz@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6673.