Lawmakers: Court’s ruling clears way for balancing budget

“I think it puts us on track to get out of here before the end of May,” Naifeh said. “We know what we’re working with, and I think it makes our budget process run a lot more smoothly.”

Work on the budget was put on hold while the federal courts reviewed Gov. Phil Bredesen’s plan to drastically cut the number of people on TennCare.

Bredesen has said the cuts are necessary because keeping TennCare intact would require $650 million more in state spending — requiring deep cuts in almost every other budget area.

TennCare serves about 1.3 million people — nearly 23 percent of the state’s population.

But early last week, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a ruling issued from Cincinnati that a federal judge had overstepped his authority in January when he stopped the state from making the cuts. The panel said the judge could review only whether the state was following proper procedures for disenrollment.

The appeals court said U.S. District Court Judge William J. Haynes improperly restricted “the state’s substantive policy choices in altering the TennCare program.”

Haynes said he wanted to review the state’s proposal to cut the rolls, and he started a hearing March 28 to make sure the state had considered all alternatives. He has not yet issued a ruling in the case.

The Bredesen administration has said cutting people from TennCare is a last resort.

“We’re moving forward with the plan I don’t like, because it involves taking people off the rolls,” Gov. Phil Bredesen said. “But I’m forced into making it happen that way.”

Tennessee Justice Center director Gordon Bonnyman, the main legal advocate for TennCare enrollees, said the fate of the program now falls to the “public and their elected representatives.”

House Majority Leader Kim McMillan, D-Clarksville, said she doesn’t know of a formal plan to help enrollees knocked off the rolls, but she said “it is the hope and goal of the Legislature to try to keep as many people insured as possible.”

“We are continuing to look for ways that we can deal with some of the cuts by looking at safety net programs,” McMillan said. “I think in the near future you’ll see some legislation that will be moving through both the House and the Senate to deal with the safety net.”

Lawmakers didn’t elaborate on the specifications of the programs, or their cost, but House Finance Committee Chairman Craig Fitzhugh said something has to be done.

“We’re going to have a lot of people without any health insurance, so we’re going to have to fashion a safety net before we leave here,” said the Ripley Democrat.

In the appeals court’s nine-page order, the judges note that the state lawyers’ have said the cuts would not go forward for at least two weeks. It directs the state to inform the enrollee lawyers two days before sending out disenrollment notices, giving them a chance to pursue another legal injunction.

Bredesen said the letters could go out sometime in June. But before that, he said they will be reviewed by the Tennessee Justice Center and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a federal oversight board that has already approved the governor’s disenrollment plan.

Regardless of when the notices are released, Henry Blaze, pastor of the Progressive Baptist Church in Nashville, said he and other community leaders intend to rally the public “to persuade the Legislature and governor to take another approach.”

“The only thing that will change that is the outcry of the people,” said Blaze, whose congregation is half TennCare enrollees. “And enough of that hasn’t happened to the point they need to take heed.”