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TennCare: Issue Briefs

If you care about racial disparities in health status, help stop the TennCare cuts

• TennCare is the principal source of health coverage for Tennessee’s minority community. 2 out of 5 African-Americans in Tennessee rely on TennCare for their health care coverage, while only 1 in 5 white Tennesseans relies on TennCare. More than half of African-American children are covered by TennCare.
  
• The TennCare cuts have taken away $1.7 billion in medical care from TennCare patients.
  
• These cuts have widened the gap in health status between African-Americans and whites.
  
• The quotas on medical services for adults – including a limit of only two brand name prescriptions and three generic drugs per month – are among the lowest in the nation. Those with serious chronic illnesses whose conditions require more medication than the limit allows have been hit hardest. These include people with diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma and heart disease. These diseases all strike more frequently in the African-American community.
  
• The state has taken away TennCare coverage completely from 191,000 sick adults who will have no other way to get insurance. Of these 191,000  45,000 are African-American.
  
• The cuts have put an enormous financial burden on The Med, Meharry General,  and Erlanger hospitals, as well as on local clinics. The Tennessee Hospital Association believes as many as 20 Tennessee hospitals will not survive, even with significant provider payments from the state.
  
• Cutting people from TennCare will raise the death rate by as many as  440 deaths per year, or an additional, preventable death every 36 hours, according to a study by the U.T. Center for Health Services Research.

Tennessee is now on target to save more than $1 BILLION in pharmacy costs ALONE from simply managing its pharmacy program – not from cutting people. Tennessee has a significant budget surplus and TennCare reserves, more than enough to protect vulnerable Tennesseans while the state continues cost-saving management reforms to the TennCare program.

Read the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s letter to Gov. Bredesen regarding Tennessee’s definition of “medically necessary” >>

Read NAACP Tennessee’s resolution about TennCare reforms proposed in 2004>>

Click to read TJC TennCare stories

Read about other opposition to Tennessee's health care policies.

Click to get involved.