Appeals court upholds TennCare cuts

AP ^ | 5/27/5

[SmithL]

NASHVILLE — A federal appeals court panel has approved Tennessee’s procedures for kicking people off TennCare, the state’s expanded Medicaid program.

The ruling, which overturns a lower court decision, means the state does not have to hold a hearing for each TennCare recipient before removing them from the program.

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday and handed down a decision Friday.

The court said decisions on how to run TennCare were up to the elected officials in Tennessee, "so long as the State’s disenrollment process satisfies the requirement of the Medicaid regulations and statute, any relevant consent decrees and the Constitution."

Gov. Phil Bredesen has proposed removing up to 323,000 adults from TennCare to save money, but he recently released a plan to keep the cuts at only about 225,000 people.

The appeals court overturned a decision by U.S. District Court Judge William J. Haynes, who said all TennCare enrollees deserved a neutral hearing in case they had been wrongfully terminated.

The state had argued that hearings for every TennCare recipient cut from the program would be impractical, and that the disenrollment procedure met all legal requirements.

[SmithL]

Bingo!

[HangnJudge]

Having lived in Tennessee for 19 years
the consequences of an open-ended system of health care
have become bluntly clear

I'll be glad when TennCare is dead

[NavVet]

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to impliment a European style system of socialized medicine with more than a touch of Marxism.