HASLAMCARE:
House panel aims to expand health care to uninsured.
State House Speaker Beth Harwell’s creation Tuesday of a new House-only task force to come up with small pilot programs for expanding health coverage to the uninsured was greeted with skepticism, particularly among Democrats.
Harwell, R-Nashville, named four House Republicans to the “3-Star Healthy Project” and charged them with coming up with a plan “with conservative Tennessee principles” to take to the Obama administration for review in June.
It would largely consist of experimental programs with limited enrollment and features such as health savings accounts, premiums and incentives for healthy behaviors by enrollees, and “circuit breakers” that would halt the programs if costs exceed projections.
The pilots would be evaluated and, if results are favorable, expanded. They would replace Gov. Bill Haslam’s Insure Tennessee plan, which would have expanded coverage to nearly 300,000 low-income, working uninsured Tennesseans. That plan failed to win legislative approval more than a year ago.
The task force members either opposed Insure Tennessee or hold key House committee positions. Rep. Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, the task force chairman, chairs the House Health Committee. Rep. Steve McManus, R-Memphis, chairs the Insurance and Banking Committee. Rep. Roger Kane, R-Knoxville, is in the insurance industry. Rep. Matthew Hill, R-Jonesborough, is also a member.
Whatever the task force proposes must win approval of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which approves state Medicaid programs such as TennCare and thus the billions of federal dollars that mostly fund them.
Harwell announced the task force’s creation and introduced its members during an afternoon news conference in the State Capitol, in which Haslam
participated and offered his backing.
“I welcome these folks who are willing to step into the conversation,” the governor said. “One of the hard things about Insure Tennessee was that, though we worked on it for 18 months, by the time we got CMS approval, it was late in the year with the legislative session coming back up quickly and there was never any time for full engagement (with lawmakers) about what we could or could not work out.”
Democrats were blunt in their assessment of the announcement.
“What a sad political joke. What a political charade,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Stewart of Nashville. “The governor has a plan that has been approved by CMS. It’s widely supported by the public. We came up here today to hear a health care announcement and we’ve heard about creating a task force that may think about doing pilot programs, that has never spoken to the federal government. This is not a plan.”
Stewart questioned the timing of the announcement at the end of the legislative session, calling it “an effort to delay and to not pass Gov. Haslam’s plan.”
The legislature plans to adjourn for the year late next week.
Although several state senators of both parties watched the announcement alongside reporters, health industry representatives and health care advocates, the task force is a House-only affair — at least initially. Sexton said efforts will be made to include participation by senators and Democrats.
Sen. Richard Briggs, R-Knoxville, a cardiac surgeon who has been involved in health care policy at the state and federal levels, attended the announcement but said afterward that the first he had heard about it or the task force was a couple of hours earlier at lunch, from the governor’s top assistant who was dining nearby.
“I agree it has to be affordable and if this works, I’m all for it,” he said. “We’re just going to have to watch and wait and see what comes out.”
But as the questioning began to focus more on the political aspects and as a young protester shouting, “Speaker Harwell, when will you stop using the poor as political pawns?” was being led out of the room by Capitol security, Haslam defended the new approach.
“If you want to immediately turn this into a political argument, we’re back where we were before,” Haslam said.