MYTH # 5: REALITY The “extras” that TennCare pays for, but that many commercial insurers do not cover, are not frills. Nursing home care, treatment for severely emotionally disturbed children, drugs for people with hemophilia are expensive, to be sure, but that does not make them luxuries. The relatively small number of people (around 150,000 of the program’s total enrollment of 1.3 million) on whom the majority of TennCare money is spent typically have 5 or more simultaneous chronic illnesses.1 Their care costs a lot, but it is not optional or discretionary, and they are too sick and poor to pay for it themselves. The sad reality is that the state has BOTH cut benefits for adults to the lowest level in the nation AND has also cut off care altogether for the sickest of adult TennCare beneficiaries. Cutting the benefits has NOT resulted in covering more people – just the opposite. 1 These include diabetes, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, etc. Memorandum from Richard Chapman, Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration to Tony Garr, Tennessee Health Care Campaign, March 24, 2004.
|