Let Obama Know Bredesen Is Wrong for HHS!
No he can’t
With Tom Daschle’s Health and Human Services nomination now a minor historical footnote, Tennessee’s health advocates are leading the crusade to persuade President Obama to take Tennessee Governor Bredesen off of his shortlist for HHS secretary. Bredesen is notorious in Tennessee for cutting 150,000 people from the Medicaid rolls and capping prescription drugs during the state’s fiscal crisis in 2005. Talk about balancing the budget on the backs of poor people!
Thankfully, people with AIDS—along with pregnant women, children and people with certain disabilities—were exempt from Breseden’s budget ax. But Bredesen, a former health care exec, has a troubling record on other AIDS issues. His one high-profile AIDS-related bill is a 2007 law requiring people convicted of promoting sex work to be tested for HIV—but no other sexually transmitted disease.
We can do better
Obama’s other top pick to head HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, has received much more positive feedback from advocates. She used to run the state’s health insurance commission and refused to take campaign contributions from insurers. As governor she expanded sex education, as well as health services for pregnant women.
To urge Obama to take Bredesen off the HHS short list, call the White House Switchboard at 202-456-1414 or fax a letter to 202-456-2461. Here’s what you can say: “Hi, my name is _________. I want to let President Obama know that Gov. Bredesen would be a poor choice to head the HHS. Obama needs to nominate someone who doesn’t sacrifice poor people to meet the government’s bottom line.”
Want to know all the reasons Bredesen is wrong for HHS? Here’s the Tennessee Health Care Campaign’s list:
1. Uninsured numbers have increased under Bredesen’s watch. When Bredesen became governor, about one in eight Tennesseans were uninsured. Into his second term, about one in six are uninsured. Tennessee also ranks number one in personal bankruptcies, half of which are related to medical debt.
2. Bredesen doesn’t like the federal government. He has openly sneered at the federal government and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, whining that there may be a string or two attached with the millions of dollars Tennessee gets or could get to help cover its one million uninsured. In fact, he proudly cut people from the state’s Medicaid program, stating he would devise a state-only-funded alternative, giving up hundreds of millions in federal matching dollars so that he would not have to comply with federal rules which protect people’s health.
3. Bredesen’s ideas for coverage aren’t working. He has devised a set of health care products, cleverly called Cover Tennessee. Trouble is, the programs cover few Tennesseans. The so-called Cover TN for low-wage workers of small businesses is entering its third year and to date is “covering” less than 18,000 of Tennessee’s nearly one million uninsured. Bredesen likes to say of the program: “Something is better than nothing.” Apparently, sensible Tennesseans disagree, understanding this pretend, limited, insurance offers little in way of health and financial security compared to its costs.
In 2007, advocates had to push the governor to add dental and vision benefits to CoverKids (SCHIP), like every other state has. But, to date, the state has not made good on its promise to add vision care. And, more than 50,000 kids who are eligible for the program are still not enrolled. AccessTN, the state’s new high-risk pool has enrolled less than 5,000 people because it remains too expensive for most Tennesseans.
4. Bredesen broke his campaign promise. He ran for governor of Tennessee in 2002, promising that he would fix TennCare through better management of the program, including reining in the managed care organizations. His opponent openly said he would cut hundreds of thousands of people and return to Medicaid. As it is today, Tennessee has returned to Medicaid under Bredesen’s watch and its program is the most restrictive Medicaid program in the country.
5. Bredesen cut the largest number of Medicaid enrollees, ever. In 2005, Bredesen stripped nearly 200,000 medically fragile adults from Medicaid/TennCare, creating the single largest one time cut of the uninsured in our nation’s history.
6. Bredesen protects MCO profiteers and sees enrollees as the problem. Bredesen continues to insist that the cuts had to happen because TennCare was bankrupting the state. The truth is, the state was mismanaging the program, not willing to use Drug Utilization Review or to put managed care companies back on risk (sound management principles that health care advocates had been calling for in lieu of Draconian cuts. These management programs were only implemented after—not before—Bredesen made the cuts.
7. Bredesen plays a shell game. The thousands of very sick people who were cut from TennCare did not go away . The medically fragile uninsured had to turn to already financially burdened local government, free clinics and hospitals to get some care. Bredesen simply balanced the state’s ledger page by shifting the costs to families, local governments, hospitals, and county jails. The data that explains this comes Tennessee’s own Comptroller’s office,
Posted on February 12, 2009 at 1:52 am
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