TennCare Opening

Tennessee residents, hopeful of winning the health care lottery, will have a chance to join the taxpayer funded health insurance plan.

TennCare has not been accepting new enrollment applications for some time but will create an opening on February 21 for those who call 866-358-3230. The line will remain open until 9:30PM or until 2500 people call in.

TennCare is a managed care program implemented in 1994 as an experiment to save taxpayer dollars. Under a special 5 year waiver from CMS, the state of Tennessee was allowed to move covered particpants from traditional Medicaid fee for service and place them in a managed care program.

Initially 800,000 residents were moved in to the program and an additional 500,000 who were not eligible for Medicaid were admitted in to TennCare.

The initial budget for TennCare was $2.6 billion. By 2005 the annual budget had grown to $8.5 billion without any change in the number of covered participants.

That's over a 300% increase in 9 years to provide coverage for roughly 1.2 million residents.

This is a micro view of what Obamneycrap hopes to do on a much broader scale.

If Tennessee has not been able to control the cost of health care for 1.2 million people how will Obamneycrap do any better for the estimated 15 - 20 million NEW participants that will be eligible for Medicaid on January 1, 2014? This is in addition to the roughly 50 million already covered by Medicaid.

For those who are interested in reviewing the progression of a health care program for the poor, Tennessee has posted a timeline starting in 1994 and extending through 2011.

TennCare is a working laboratory for Obamneycrap.

Scary, huh?

They must think money grows on trees.