PRESS RELEASE

211 7th Avenue N, Ste. 100

Nashville, TN 37219

Phone: (615) 255-0331 Fax: (615) 255-0354

e-mail: info@tnjustice.org website:  www.tnjustice.org

  1/30/2020                                                                                                                                                     

Michele Johnson, Executive Director of the Tennessee Justice Center, said the following in response to the announcement from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) of the Healthy Adult Opportunity Initiative which provides guidance to states encouraging block grant waivers for the Medicaid expansion population:

“CMS’s announcement shows that Tennessee leaders have spent a year of wasted time and resources on something that a simple inquiry to CMS should have made clear was not going to happen. This means we will go back to square one. Anything they come up with now to try to fit their waiver proposal into the terms of the guidance would be substantially different from what they first proposed and must go back through new state and federal comment periods. This expensive distraction unnecessarily terrorized families while neglecting to do anything to address our urgent health care needs, like the rural hospital closure crisis, plummeting children’s enrollment and the overdose epidemic. We have a healthcare problem. They have a political problem, and their political gimmicks don’t address kitchen table issues that everyday families face.”