MYTH # 1: “TennCare was a budget buster.” REALITY TennCare was basically sound, and for the first seven years of its existence, the program saved the state hundreds of millions of dollars.1 Unfortunately, beginning in 2000, a series of program changes and management errors significantly altered the program’s design. For the past five years, TennCare has consumed more than its share of new state revenues. The answer was to restore the financial discipline of the program’s original design, through better management that was promised but never provided. 1“TennCare’s cost compares favorably to that of other states’ Medicaid programs… In 1999, Tennessee had the lowest average medical services payment per recipient of 12 Southern states reporting…. An analysis by the Comptroller of the Treasury found that the TennCare program cumulatively saved the state over $2 billion in state tax dollars [from 1993 through 2001]”. Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury, TennCare: A Closer Look, p. 1 (October 2001), available at http://www.comptroller.state.tn.us/orea/reports/tenncarebrief.pdf. C. Conover & H. Davies, The Role of TennCare in Health Policy for Low-Income People in Tennessee, p. 9(Urban Institute, 2000), available at http://www.urban.org/uploadedPDF/occa33.pdf, estimated state government savings at $245 million during the first five years.
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