Bill to help TennCare disenrolled passes Senate committee
“The goal is to give all enrollees to be disenrolled some help,” Senate Minority Leader Jim Kyle said Tuesday.
Kyle sponsored the so-called “soft landing bill” that was unanimously approved Monday by the Senate Commerce, Labor and Agriculture Committee and sent to the Senate Finance Committee.
State officials have said they need to cut up to 323,000 from TennCare to save the state $500 million to $600 million in the coming fiscal year.
TennCare represents about 26 percent of state revenues. The $8 billion expanded Medicaid program provides managed care coverage for 1.3 million uninsured, disabled and uninsurable Tennessee residents.
Gov. Phil Bredesen recently released a plan to keep the cuts at about 225,000 people — including 97,000 with high medical bills — by trimming benefits and pumping another $100 million in state money into TennCare. However, that plan is not concrete because of pending court cases concerning consent decrees.
Regardless of how many people are disenrolled, Kyle said the governor and the Legislature have “hoped to create as soft a landing for those citizens as possible within the parameters of existing revenue.”
Kyle didn’t have an overall cost for the bill, but he did say no less than $38 million would be used to assist the Severely and Persistently Mentally Ill, or SPMI.
“Given the amount of chicken we have, we’re trying to make the most chicken salad we can,” the Memphis Democrat said of funding.
On Monday, the same committee unanimously approved the TennCare budget but recommended that lawmakers be allowed to look for alternatives to cutting enrollees, including “additional revenue.”
The recommendation was made by Sen. Doug Jackson, D-Dickson. Kyle said he respects Jackson’s intentions, but doesn’t think “there will be any revenue bill that can pass this Legislature this year.”
The committee on Tuesday, however, did vote to include in Kyle’s legislation a bill by Jackson that would cap charges to uninsured patients at 150 percent of the average amount charged to insurance companies. That bill has passed the Senate.
Other components of Kyle’s legislation includes a 24-hour hot line for disenrollees to call for help, and funding to help community and faith-based health care facilities handle the additional number of uninsured as a result of TennCare cuts.
Earlier this month, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati paved the way for the state to start cutting TennCare rolls when it issued an expedited review of a federal judge’s most recent decision to slow Bredesen’s plans for TennCare.
The appeals court promised a final decision before June 1.
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On the Net:
Read HB2321/SB2300 at http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/