NASHVILLE — Gov. Bill Haslam said today he anticipates releasing details on his Medicaid-funded Insure Tennessee program as early as Thursday.
“We hope to in the next day,” Haslam told reporters following the ground breaking on the new Bridgestone Americas headquarters in downtown Nashville. “There’s been a lot of discussion about why haven’t you all been out talking with details.”
Lawmakers and some business groups have been clamoring for details on the plan ever since Haslam announced his two-pronged, market-driven proposal to extend health insurance coverage to an estimated 200,000 lower-income Tennesseans.
Haslam, a Republican, said up until now his administration has been working to put to paper the oral agreement he has with the Obama administration, an agreement he plans to submit to the GOP-led Legislature for approval as well as to the Obama adminisgtration in the form of a requested waiver of Medicaid rules for TennCare, the state’s version of Medicaid.
“We’ve been in the process of preparing that waiver,” the governor said. “Once it’s done, we will release that to everybody. We hope that’s in the next 24 hours.”
Asked by reporters about whether it will take the help of Democrats to win approval, Haslam said, “I think that’s probably a fair observation, that for this to pass all the Democrats will have to be for it and obviously we’ll have to have enough people to get to 50 [votes] in the House and 17 in the Senate.”
Republicans have 73 members and Democrats have 26 members in the 99-member House. In the 33-member Senate, there are 28 Republicans and five Democrats.
The governor said he’s looking at calling the Legislature into special session to consider his Medicaid proposal in early February.