Bredsen: ‘Safety Net’ will protect those cut from TennCare

“In states where they don’t have a program like TennCare, the safety net is taking care of everyone,” he said following a meeting of the task force formed in January to suggest ways to create a “soft landing” for people losing their TennCare benefits.

Tennessee will strengthen the safety net to help not only the disenrolled TennCare patients but others. There are more than 600,000 other residents without medical insurance who are already using the clinics, health departments and hospitals that form the safety net, Bredesen said.

TennCare is a roughly $8 billion expanded Medicaid program serving 1.3 million uninsured and uninsurable Tennessee residents, nearly 23 percent of the population.

Bredesen has said unless the cuts to TennCare are made, the state would have to eliminate $650 million in state services elsewhere.

“I think it’s important to get control of TennCare and control of its costs,” he said.

The safety net health care will look different to former TennCare participants depending on where in Tennessee they live, Department of Health Commissioner Kenneth Robinson said.

Rural West Tennessee is primarily served by private doctors operating clinics in their communities, while on the Cumberland Plateau, federally financed community clinics serve most uninsured residents, Robinson said.

Around Knoxville for the past 14 years, InterFaith Health Clinic has provided health care to uninsured people.

Interfaith is a network of primary care clinics and specialists who charge uninsured people on a sliding scale based on their ability to pay, executive director Melissa Knight said.

Last year the organization served more than 6,000 people, about half of whom were without health insurance for a short time while between jobs, she said.

Robinson said the task force will present Bredesen with a report by May 1 containing “practical, affordable and sensible,” ideas to expand and strengthen the health care providers that deal most often with uninsured people.

Among the suggestions are:

— Financial support for new and existing local health care efforts.

— Promoting volunteer service networks among clinics, hospitals and other health care providers.

— Disease management for people disenrolled from TennCare to help keep their conditions stable.

— Helping those disenrolled from TennCare find private discount health plans or offering financial incentives for small employers to offer group coverage to their workers.