Top lawyers hired by state to fight for TennCare plan
Chuck Cooper, an attorney in Washington, D.C., was hired by the state at $350 an hour to fight a challenge by the Tennessee Justice Center. Nashville attorney Aubrey Harwell also will work on the case, at $190 an hour.
“You need to have the best possible help you can get,” Bredesen said Thursday. “I just wanted to get some absolutely first-class, world-class counsel by my side as we work through these issues and not just roll over for the advocates.”
Tennessee also will pay paralegals and other lawyers working with the two attorneys by the hour.
Bredesen said he wants to argue for his TennCare plan “very forcefully and aggressively.” He has said his reform plan will save the state $2.5 billion during the next four years.
TennCare provides health coverage for 1.3 million poor, uninsured and disabled people and is expected to cost $7.8 billion in fiscal 2005, or about a third of the state’s budget.
TennCare spokesman Michael Drescher said there are no estimates of how much the state would pay Cooper and Harwell for their services.
“There’s an enormous amount at stake from a financial standpoint but also for the long-term viability of the TennCare program,” he said.
Lawmakers and other supporters of TennCare reform say the expenses are necessary if the private lawyers can help the state win approval of Bredesen’s plan from the federal government.
“To individuals, the amount we will spend on legal counsel on this matter is probably shockingly high,” said state Sen. David Fowler, R-Signal Mountain, a member of the TennCare Oversight Committee. “To spend a hundred, two hundred or three hundred thousand in legal fees to win a lawsuit that allows you to save in one year hundreds of millions of dollars is a pretty good investment.”
A federal judge this week delayed depositions in the long-running legal dispute between TennCare officials and the Tennessee Justice Center.
TennCare enrollee advocates argue the state is not complying with a 1998 settlement governing the care of children in TennCare. If the state is found in violation of the 1998 settlement, TennCare will again have to pay the legal fees of the Tennessee Justice Center.
The state has paid the Tennessee Justice Center $3.35 million since January 2003 after losing a series of class-action lawsuits filed against TennCare. Gordon Bonnyman, executive director of the Tennessee Justice Center, charges $250 an hour. Michele Johnson, another lawyer at the center, charges $190 an hour.
A “special master” appointed by a federal judge to make certain TennCare is complying with the 1998 ruling has been paid $1 million by the state program. That includes $3,700 a month for office space and phone service.
Johnson said the legal fees are not the only costs to taxpayers. The proposed reform plan that cuts costs by limited services available to enrollees could ultimately cost the state more, she said.
“If children can’t get the medication they need and wind up going to the hospital for a bleeding ulcer or an asthma attack, that doesn’t make sense for taxpayers,” she said.
Among the biggest concerns by the reform plan’s critics are Bredesen’s proposals to limit drugs to six prescriptions a month in most instances, eliminate some categories of drugs from coverage and force the use of generics where possible.
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On the Net:
TennCare Bureau: http://www.state.tn.us/tenncare
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Information from: Chattanooga Times Free Press, http://www.timesfreepress.com