IT WAS FEDERAL DOLLARS what part do you not yet understand? As for the children? The only obligation should have been to children of deceased or disabled workers. If it had went broke then that would have resolved a lot of issues. Here is what you do not understand. It was more or less Universal Health Care. It was a dumping programs so big name insurers would not have to take persons with such things as Hypertension. Now you explain this to me I'm all ears. How come when I became disabled and lost my employer's coverage I was turned down for coverage? Under Medicaid I would have been covered. I got on it not because of my disability but because of Hypertension. You're from Cali and know very little about Tennscares history and the corruption it brought. You don't know about the doctors in this state being blackmailed by a Big Name insurer to either sign on or loose their business in the private sector.
Now then if it was simply a matter of a state issue then why pray tell did he have to go to Washington DC for funding and waivers?
IT WAS FEDERAL DOLLARS what part do you not yet understand?Yes, it was federal dollars the state needed to fund the program. Fred's job as Tennessee Senator was to go to Washington and secure those federal dollars, and he did. I'm not going to argue the merits of TennCare itself. I'm sure it was a crappy program and was terribly mismanaged. It wouldn't have gone insolvent and kicked everyone off had it not been. But it wasn't Fred's role as elected US senator to decide the merits of the program either. It was for the governor and the state legislature. State officials, not the federal representatives. They are called representatives for a reason - because they are sent by the state to represent the state and its interests in the federal government. Period. The state had a program that for better or for worse needed federal funding. Fred was chosen by the people to go to Washington and get it. And so he did. It wasn't his constitutional role to veto the program. What part of that do you not understand? It sounds to me like you wanted Fred to act like one of those activist judges he despises and start rewriting state law by fiat. There is nothing conservative, federalist, or republican about that.