Tennessee CapitolOur legislators should give Insure Tennessee a second look and, this time around, give it the green light. We need it.
Two years ago, Gov. Bill Haslam announced that, because the Affordable Care Act was so flawed, he was rejecting that law’s option to expand Medicaid. He promised, however, to work hard on an alternative plan that would be true to conservative principles and meet Tennesseans’ health care needs.
The governor is as good as his word. He announced in December that he had won critically important concessions from the Obama administration. Our state will use federal money that had been slated for Medicaid expansion to instead cover people with a new, tailored-for-Tennessee program designed by the governor and his staff. That program, Insure Tennessee, provides vouchers for people to buy into employers’ insurance where available. Participants can also choose to enroll in privately administered TennCare plans, where they have incentives to engage in healthy behaviors and must meet personal financial responsibility requirements. Insure Tennessee requires participants to have “skin in the game,” while Medicaid and Obamacare do not.
But wait, there’s more! Insure Tennessee does not require an additional dime from state taxpayers. Initially, it is funded entirely with federal dollars — dollars that Tennesseans pay as federal taxes but that would otherwise pay for Medicaid expansion in other states. Within a few years, the federal share declines to 90 percent, with the state responsible for the other 10 percent.
However, Haslam got a commitment from Tennessee’s hospitals to pick up the state’s share by paying the part not covered by federal funds. The governor has a Supreme Court decision, a written commitment from Washington and an opinion of Tennessee’s own attorney general all guaranteeing the state’s ability to drop Insure Tennessee should the federal government or the hospitals ever fail to cover the program’s full cost.
The plan would close a “coverage gap” that snares 280,000 Tennesseans. Military vets make up 24,000 of those Tennesseans. They cannot qualify for TennCare but don’t make enough to qualify for Obamacare. They go without preventive health care, and their families live with the constant fear of financial ruin.
Respected University of Tennessee economists have vouched for Insure Tennessee’s positive impact on the state’s economy and state budget. They explained how the plan will grow jobs and help sustain the health care infrastructure we all use by providing funds to hospitals — especially in rural areas — facing damaging rate changes in Obamacare. The Tennessee Business Roundtable and chambers of commerce endorsed the plan, as did the Tennessee Medical Association and all of Tennessee’s hospitals.
The governor called a special session of the legislature in early February to approve the plan. Then a funny thing happened on the way to Insure Tennessee becoming a reality. The plan stumbled in one Senate committee, and the legislature never even got to vote on it.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear the necessary educational work had not been done. A poll on the eve of the special session revealed that two-thirds of Tennesseans had not heard of Insure Tennessee, but that when they learned the facts, they overwhelmingly supported it. Statements by some of the senators who voted against the measure showed they lacked the facts. Some even confused it with Obamacare, which the governor had forcefully rejected two years before.
The urgent needs that guided our governor to propose Insure Tennessee still exist. Let’s pass it.
Brian Frye is a Chattanooga attorney. He is a member of the Hamilton County Pachyderm Club and is GOP precinct chairman for East Brainerd.