In case you missed it:
Lawmakers have convened a special legislative session to take up Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s proposal to extend health coverage to 280,000 low-income Tennesseans. Haslam’s plan is a two-year pilot project called Insure Tennessee. The deal calls on state hospitals to pay the $74 million state share to draw down $2.8 billion in federal Medicaid money to offer coverage to more uninsured Tennesseans. The governor spent the weeks before the special session touring the state to promote his plan to lawmakers.
NASHVILLE – Gov. Bill Haslam today urged state lawmakers today to pass his Insure Tennessee proposal, making the argument to his fellow, often skeptical Republicans that when it comes to the “broken” health care system, “I just don’t believe that we can sit back and do nothing.”
“After nearly two years of hard work, we have a Tennessee-specific plan that addresses health outcomes and cost,” Haslam told the special session of the General Assembly of his plan to use federal Medicaid dollars to extend health insurance coverage to 280,000 to 300,000 low-income Tennesseans in a two-year pilot project.
“This is not Obamacare,” Haslam said. “If it was, it wouldn’t have taken us this long to negotiate. We have done what you asked us to do and what we said we would do. We found a unique, Tennessee solution.”
Haslam is asking lawmakers to approve a resolution granting him authority to seek a federal waiver of Medicaid rules to implement the program. Conservative critics have pounced and many Republicans in the GOP-dominated House and Senate are spooked by anything to do with the president and his Affordable Care Act.