As in other Republican-controlled states, Tennessee’s top officials are in a needless fret over whether to initiate planning for a state insurance exchange, the entities that states must have in place beginning in January 2014 to help uninsured citizens buy competitively priced, reasonably comprehensive health insurance.
Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey says he fears being seen as supporting “Obamacare” if he moves legislation to establish an exchange. Gov. Bill Haslam says he opposes the requirement for states to establish an exchange to promote transparent insurance competition. But he also fears losing millions in federal grants to help create an exchange, and possibly state control of the exchange, if the state doesn’t move forward and defaults to a federally established exchange.
Given the huge number of adult Tennesseans who stand to benefit greatly from the insurance reform, the heartless irony of their partisan remarks, and their misplaced fear of health care reform, is reprehensible, to say the least.
Nearly half of Tennessee’s employers do not provide employer-based health insurance. At least one out of every three Tennesseans under the age of 65 (or about 1.7 million of the 5.3 million Tennesseans under age 65), and probably half of Tennessee adults between the ages of 26 and 65, do not have health insurance. They need and deserve the benefits of health care reform in general, and the state exchange in particular.
These are citizens who are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid/TennCare; who do not have access to, or cannot afford, employer-based health insurance; and who cannot afford to purchase individual health insurance.