Judge allows third party to enter TennCare battle
A federal judge let a well-known civil rights attorney enter into the touchy legal debate over TennCare, saying people who may lose their health insurance under a return to basic Medicaid have a right to be part of ongoing negotiations.
The order from U.S. District Judge John Nixon, who last week informally suggested that former Gov. Ned McWherter take a formal role in mediating the debate, allows George Barrett of Nashville to intervene in the case.
Barrett has said he is representing the roughly 430,000 who might be cut from the program “without so much as a life preserver.”
The legal maneuvering serves as a backdrop for ongoing negotiations between Gov. Phil Bredesen and Tennessee Justice Center lawyer Gordon Bonnyman. The two are taking a break from negotiations, promising to return next week and look for “a third way” to save TennCare.
Bonnyman has won several lawsuits against TennCare, and Bredesen said he needs relief from legal agreements to save TennCare.
The governor says the costly program that covers 1.3 million Tennesseans needs to be revamped — or he will return it to basic Medicaid that offers coverage for about 900,000 people.
So far, Bonnyman and Bredesen have had little luck in crafting an agreement.
State lawyers said at a hearing last week that they would let Barrett into the discussions if the court decided to let him intervene in the legal case. Bonnyman has opposed the move.
Barrett argued in court last week that his experience in contentious civil rights and labor disagreements would give him experience to help mediate the affair, hopefully finding a way to revamp the program in a way that Bonnyman would find palatable.
Barrett said that Bonnyman could not simultaneously represent the 900,000 people that would still have health care under failed negotiations and the others that would not.
Nixon, in his order signed Tuesday and released Wednesday, said the negotiations may decide the fate of the TennCare program.
“The state is in a fiscal crisis with respect to TennCare expenditures, and the dissolution of TennCare in favor of a return to traditional Medicaid is a very real possibility,” Nixon wrote in his order.