General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTennessee Aims to Become Pioneer in Cutting Health Spending on the Poor, Children
The radical Republican plan to gut Medicaid as we know it is alive and well in the state of Tennessee.
Bill Lee, Tennessees Republican governor, unveiled on Tuesday a plan to make his state the first in the nation to overhaul its Medicaid system into a so-called block grant program. Going back to Ronald Reagans presidency, transforming Medicaid the Great Society initiative to provide suitable health care for the young and the poor into a block-grant model has long been a dream of the conservative right as a way to remove power from the federal government and shift it to the states.
Generally speaking, block granting works like this: Instead of the federal government covering a portion of a states health-care costs for eligible people, the state would take an upfront chunk of money from Washington and then choose to spend it in whatever way it chose to. A block-grant plan would also let a state off the hook for providing the core health-care services to some of the required types of patients that come with receiving Medicaid funds. Unlike the strictest version of block-grant plans, Tennessees program would includes provisions that would give the state some extra money if the Medicaid rolls expand.
The plan, called TennCare, requires approval from the federal government, leaving the fate of health care for poor Tennessee residents in the hands of Donald Trumps Health and Human Services Department.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tennessee-medicaid-plan-poor-886201/
Docreed2003
(16,817 posts)I see it every day with the patients I care for...this will only hurt those vulnerable even more.
Massacure
(7,498 posts)To play Devil's Advocate, how would we react if California demanded a $45 billion dollar block grant (12% of federal spending, proportional to their percent of the national population) and then turned around and implemented a single payer system?
Granted that is not what Tennessee is going to do, but I expect there will be winners and losers.