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MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Medicaid will soon cover the cost of diapers for the first two years of a child’s life in Tennessee. “The cost of diapers is outrageous,” said Linda Buckingham as she held her 1-year-old niece. “It’s ridiculous, really.” “It will help my mom a lot,” said Treazon Ali. “It will help my sister a lot.” Tennessee will become the first state to cover diapers under Medicaid, according to the National Diaper Banks Network. “That is so cool,” said Machelle Jackson, a 10-year-old shopping with her mom. “I feel like it's cool for the parents that really don't have...

Phil Bredesen, the health insurance executive turned governor, had an antidote to contain the spiraling costs of the state’s Medicaid program – disenroll elderly, sick and disabled Tennesseans from TennCare. According to Gordon Bonnyman, co-founder of the Tennessee Justice Center, two years into Bredesen’s first term as governor, “[a]pproximately 200,000 of [TennCare’s] costliest patients lost their coverage over a four-month period in late 2005.” Bonnyman characterized this group as the “sickest subgroup of the TennCare population.” The TNReport calculated that by the time Bredesen left office in 2011, approximately 350,000 Tennesseans were cut from TennCare which included an estimated 100,000...

Any health care facility providing abortions in Tennessee will no longer receive any government funding, thanks to a new state law. The amount of state-funded health care will not be cut, just transferred to health care organizations that do not kill the unborn, Live Action reports: “Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed a bill this week that will soon strip Planned Parenthood and other abortion facilities of state funding. The state will now request a federal waiver which allows them to bar TennCare, Tennessee’s Medicaid program, from giving money to any abortion facility.” “Instead of directing funding towards abortionists, TennCare money...

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Former state Sen. John Ford’s federal TennCare fraud and corruption convictions were tossed Thursday morning by the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court specifically found that Ford’s failure to disclose that he was working as a consultant for a TennCare contractor while he was a state senator voting on policies governing TennCare wasn’t a matter for the federal courts. It was instead a matter for state government, the court ruled. A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the use of the “honest services” federal statute also figured prominently in a ruling that could mean Ford will be released...

Crossville, Tenn. - A Cumberland County family blames the state's healthcare system for the death of their son. Frank and Ann Zingheim's 48-year-old son, Scott, committed suicide on March 31st. On Sunday, his obituary appeared in The Tennessean, with a tribute to his life, and also a message for state lawmakers. "No one listens, no one listens," said Frank Zingheim. "There are major cuts being made in Nashville right now." Scott Zingheim was diagnosed as a Paranoid Schizophrenic when he was 15-years-old. His parents say he was in and out of hospitals for most of his life, until one program...

NASHVILLE -- Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam says the "easy money" answers to budget problems have been used up and that dealing with the recession's aftermath and a loss of federal stimulus funds is going to hurt. "We have to now go back and make those hard decisions, and I think they're even harder than I thought they would be," the Republican governor said last week as he finished four days of public hearings on the state's 2011-12 budget. SNIP Last week, heads of 26 agencies trooped before Haslam, outlining their best efforts to identify additional cuts of 1 percent to...

I just read that 4 states are exempt from Obamacare: Mass, Ohio, Tennessee and New Jersey. I missed this in the news. Anyone know how and why Tennessee is exempt?

Tennesseans will save $2.7 billion on health care insurance when health care reform is in place in 2014, according to a new study. That total will come as an estimated 664,100 Tennesseans will be eligible for premium tax credits, the study says. The credits will be available from the federal government to people and families who make up to four times the national poverty level, up to $43,320 for an individual and up to $88,200 for a family of four. The amount of the credit will be based on income. Money from the credits will flow directly from the government...

Hit by a $96 million loss from managing TennCare enrollees last year, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee will cut reimbursements to thousands of specialty physicians and to some hospitals by 14 percent and is counting on an emergency room diversion program. The losses were more than twice what BlueCross expected and could reach $135 million this year, according to a records review by the Chattanooga Times Free Press. It is the latest in a line of cutbacks looming for providers — a 7 percent rate reduction to all TennCare providers that takes effect in July, and an unresolved issue in Congress...

Snip "If we get hit with a $50 million cut it doesn't take a lot of math to figure out that the fat lady sings," Med board chairman Gene Holcomb said to the hospital's board Thursday morning. snip Med officials last year faced similar TennCare cuts that would have produced the same door-closing effects. However, the TennCare budget was saved with a $1.1 billion infusion from the federal stimulus package.

Give President Obama credit for persistence. And stubbornness. And lack of imagination. He declared again last week that his health care plan "will slow the growth of health care costs for our families and our businesses and our government." And this historic achievement will be accompanied by a dazzling array of new medical benefits that everyone will receive--guaranteed by law. Okay, you've heard this before. But that's the president's story, and he's sticking to it. The question is, why? Does he think we're stupid? His argument has failed to persuade a sizeable majority of the American people precisely because they're...

..."With regard to President Obama's plans to use savings from Medicare waste, fraud and abuse, Gov. Bredesen noted similar arguments were made with regard to TennCare, an effort in 1994 to expand the state's version of Medicaid to cover many more people. "Tennessee has been there and done that," said Gov. Bredesen, who became governor in 2003. "That's exactly the argument for TennCare and it didn't turn out that way. Maybe they (federal government) will do a better job ... than we did in managing TennCare in the 1990s and the early part of the 2000s. I had a sense...

(CNSNews.com) – A government-run health insurance plan is enacted on the promise of increasing competition and bringing down costs, but over the years, as more people leave their private insurance to take the “public option,” the cost to operate the government plan skyrockets. Various litigation ensues, preventing the government’s attempt to reform or cut benefits. Eventually, dramatic cuts become necessary. This is not a hypothetical scenario sketched by opponents of the health care overhaul plans working their way through Congress. Rather, it is the case of what happened with a state plan in Tennessee. Tennessee is in the process of...

Unable to post text from a Gannett newspaper. To summarize, Moveon.org is trying to derail Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen's consideration for Health and Human Services Secretary. They claim Bredesen gutted TennCare, the state insurance program for the uninsured. Bredesen did cut services in TennCare to keep it solvent. He's a democrat who leans more towards fiscal conservatism than your typical beltway Dem. He has repeatedly refused to get on the "we need an income tax" bandwagon and simply said we need to live within our means. Link to Story

NewsChannel 5 Investigates: Ophelia Ford Faces TennCare Investigation July 5, 2007 06:17 PM Ophelia Ford Faces TennCare Investigation She has quickly become one of Tennessee's most controversial state senators. Now, state Sen. Ophelia Ford finds herself at the center of another controversy. NewsChannel 5 has confirmed that the Memphis Democrat is the subject of an investigation that, depending upon what agents find, could lead to criminal charges. It's a NewsChannel 5 Investigates exclusive, uncovered by our chief investigative reporter Phil Williams. Sources tell Phil that the investigation centers on possible TennCare fraud and is being conducted by TennCare's inspector general....

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger kicked off his first full term in office this week by announcing during his state-of-the-state address that he intends to implement a state health insurance plan to cover all residents, including illegal aliens. But before riding the universal health care train too far, Gov. Schwarzenegger might want to make a stop in Nashville to see exactly how such a plan has actually worked for Tennessee, where that state's abysmal TennCare program has forced dozens of hospitals out of business, pushed thousands of doctors and other health care professionals out of the state, destroyed any semblance of...

To foot the bill for Mary and Lawrence Henkel's nursing home care, her children sold everything their parents owned except for the Donelson, TN home the couple had lived in since 1967. "That was my father's dying wish - to hold onto the house, live in it, take care of it," said Nashville resident Judy Clifford, 66, one of three Henkel children. "That's what he told me, and he gave the house to me." Now TennCare wants to sell the home to help recoup the roughly $288,000 that the state says it paid to take care of Mary Henkel in...

NASHVILLE — Gov. Phil Bredesen remained hospitalized Thursday to allow doctors to control a recurring fever they believe may have been caused by a tick bite, his office said. Bredesen, 62, has been at Centennial Medical Center in Nashville since Monday night after becoming ill with a severe headache and high fever. The governor said in a statement issued by his office that doctors are "awaiting test results to determine, conclusively, whether the cause of my symptoms was a tick bite." "In the meantime, I’m working to beat back a stubborn fever that comes and goes," he said. "Until that...

NASHVILLE — Gov. Phil Bredesen on Wednesday labeled efforts by some lawmakers to restore thousands of people to TennCare and to increase spending on state highways financially reckless and politically motivated. Bredesen, a Democrat, said initiatives under way in the General Assembly to return 68,000 "uninsurable" people to the TennCare rolls and restore some money diverted from the road fund three year ago could cost the state up to $644 million. "I’d hate to see the action of a few plunge the state into crisis again," Bredesen said in a speech to the Tennessee Business Roundtable. "My hope and my...