Are you tired of the politics of NO? Let's put an end to insurance lobbyists and others delaying a much need health care plan for ALL Americans.

In this economic crisis, we can't afford NOT to pass quality, affordable health care for all this year. We will send our petition to Congress and the Senate before the vote on Health Care Reform in January.

Sign the Petition Now:

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Hello Ron, I would like you to read this article about what happened here in Tennessee with the TennCare program. It was a huge failure. I am including the link to the article in case you want to read the whole thing.

TennCare offers America health care

reality check

Obama could learn some reality from

Tennessee’s experience with TennCare. Former

Democratic Gov. Ned McWherter introduced

TennCare in early 1994 with an initial budget of

$2.6 billion. The Wall Street Journal reported

this week that TennCare proved so popular

that the rolls swelled from 500,000 to 1.4 million

by 2002.
The Journal quoted from a letter Rep. Marsha

Blackburn, R-Tenn., wrote to House members:

“Many of the concerns we have expressed about

the proposal before us today are the stark

realities of a system that went terribly wrong in

Tennessee.”
Blackburn also co-authored an essay for

RealClearPolitics with a physician, Rep. Phil Roe,

R-Johnson City. Roe and Blackburn wrote that

 55 percent of people enrolled in TennCare had

migrated from employer-provided plans. Though

TennCare’s current director disputes those

numbers, there is no denying TennCare’s effect

on the state budget. Within 10 years, TennCare

spending had mushroomed to more than $8 billion,

consuming about one-third of the state’s budget.
“No matter how forthright the (Obama)

administration’s cost estimates are, no model

accounts for the rational decisions that push

people to over-utilize the ‘free care’ a public

option offers,” Blackburn and Roe wrote in

critique of the public plan option preferred by

Obama. “Over-use caused TennCare’s

anticipated savings to evaporate and its cost

to explode.”
Faced with fiscal disaster, in 2005 Gov. Phil

Bredesen removed 170,000 people from

TennCare. In addition, Roe and Blackburn wrote,

“To pay the TennCare bill, benefits were slashed

and reimbursement rates for doctors and

hospitals were reduced. … Since they weren’t

being paid, fewer physicians could afford to accept

TennCare patients. So while a TennCare card

guaranteed you access to care, it did not

guarantee the availability of care.”
The realities of TennCare are it almost bankrupted

the state, and hundreds of thousands of

Tennesseans did not get to keep their existing

insurance. The CBO puts the price tag of

ObamaCare at $1 trillion and says millions of

people will lose their current health insurance

coverage. That’s reality — a condition from which

our president seems strangely detached.
Greg Johnson’s columns appear on Wednesdays,

Fridays and the second Sunday of each month.

Read more on his blog at:

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/johnson/.

E-mail him at: jgregjohnson@hotmail.com.

I think the words "lose your health insurance" is a corporate phrase for abandon those $&%%%@@## as soon as possible. When the managed care plans were put in place by the Nixon Administration, they were devised to maximize corporate profits by denial and delay of health care. Right now we have 47 million people who don't even have insurance to lose.