Governor wants most of new budget money for TennCare

NASHVILLE (AP) — Gov. Phil Bredesen is asking for a modest increase in state spending, part of his plan to spare some of the sickest TennCare enrollees from planned cuts, offer state employees a permanent 2 percent pay raise and bolster other initiatives.

The $270 million increase was handed over to lawmakers Wednesday as the Legislature tries to finish the state’s spending plan. Most of the new money will come from sales tax collections coming in higher than anticipated.

The governor wants to spend $180 million on his plan to reduce TennCare cuts from about 323,000 enrollees to 226,000, offer prescription drugs to some elderly people slated for disenrollment and help local agencies deal with all the new uninsured people.

A discount drug program might also be offered to people cut from TennCare, but it isn’t expected to cost the state more than few million dollars.

“These adjustments reflect our ongoing work to achieve responsible reform of TennCare while balancing the state’s other vital priorities,” Bredesen said in a statement.

Top Republicans said they still have questions for Bredesen, particularly on the fate of reform plans that helped get the former health care executive elected in 2002.

Senate Majority Leader Ron Ramsey and House Minority Leader Tre Hargett, after a morning meeting with the governor, sent a letter asking Bredesen to give them some answers — other than just blaming ongoing legal tangles.

“Before we adjourn and leave thousands of people without health care … we would like to know that the many other reforms that you have proposed have been implemented,” the Republicans wrote.

Legal advocates who have been fighting the TennCare cuts in court questioned the governor’s plans to minimize the problems facing those who will be eliminated from the $8 billion expanded Medicaid program.

The Tennessee Justice Center suggested the money the governor plans to spend in the aftermath of the cuts, including $25 million just to administer the reduction, would be better spent avoiding the cuts altogether.

The state has said that keeping TennCare intact would cost about $550 million to $600 million in new state money during the next fiscal year.

The governor’s proposal to offer a permanent 2 percent raise to state employees follows a promise he made to that group if new tax money became available. He had first offered a 1 percent raise and a 1 percent one-time bonus.

The new money would bring the total state budget to about $25.7 billion, a 3.4 percent increase over last year.