Protesters angry with TennCare cuts occupy governor’s office

The group wanted an audience with the governor, but Bredesen was in East Tennessee talking about his economic development plans.

A spokesman for the governor promised the group would be allowed to stay as long as they remained orderly and didn’t interfere with workers. Arrangements were made to let the group stay overnight.

“This is a public building,” said Bob Corney, the governor’s communications director.

Corney said the protesters would be allowed to stay overnight “out of an abundance of caution in trying to be reasonable.” The protesters were initially told they would have to leave at closing time.

The protesters rebuffed a proposal from Bredesen to meet Wednesday morning. Leaders said the governor would have to meet other demands to get them to leave — or at a minimum open up any meeting to the public and all interested TennCare enrollees.

Lori Smith, a TennCare enrollee and one of the protesters, said they want an immediate halt to the disenrollment letters being mailed out this month. They also want the governor to stop plans to reduce benefits for many enrollees spared from the cuts.

The protesters said they want the governor to agree to talks to before the end of the month aimed at looking at other ways to save TennCare.

“The governor knows what’s right and he knows the program can be saved,” Smith said. “We’re asking him to make the right decision.”

Protester Randy Alexander of Memphis said about half a dozen of them would stay overnight in the governor’s office, under the watch of state police.

“We didn’t come here to bring demands and then just say, ‘well, OK we’ll go home now,'” he said.

Corney said the governor has spent a lot of time reviewing various options for the program before deciding that he needs to cut between 226,000 to 323,000 enrollees and reduce benefits to control costs that have been increasing by double-digit percentages nearly every year.

Many of the cuts are being implemented immediately, while some planned benefit reductions hinge on an upcoming federal court case. Bredesen already has received clearance from the courts for much of his plan.

“This is a dialogue, that with just this governor, has been going on for 2 1/2 years, and there have been a lot of people working hard on this issue for a long time, and for many years before Governor Bredesen was elected,” Corney said. “To think that we could somehow step back all the way to the beginning of the process is just not very realistic at this point.

“The bottom line is that TennCare is broken and we need to fix it.”

TennCare is scheduled to cost about $8.7 billion in state and federal money for the fiscal year that starts July 1.