I don't particularly care for Bredesen as secretary of Health and Human Services - mainly because I'm sure there are, overall, better qualified candidates, and it would make State Senator Ron Ramsey - my old state senator - Governor of Tennessee.
However, the wild-eyed wailing about Bredesen over TennCare and the quote on the homepage made me feel like I needed to address this issue.
First off, a little history:
TennCare was created by former Democratic governor Ned McWherter as a way to help save on health care costs in the state. Indeed, in the first 5 years of the program, TennCare successful did just that.
However, things started to go wrong. Managed Care providers that the state contracted with either left the program or went bankrupt one by one, resulting in doctors not getting paid. The state tried passing a law mandating that certain percentage of funds paid to the MCOs go to paying doctors, which just made their financial situation worse.
Soon TeenCare became a budget behemoth threatening to take out the entire budget (Tennessee, as most states do, require a balanced budget). There was some noise in the state, particularly from outgoing republican governor Don Sundquist, to replace - either partially or totally - the regressive 6% state sales tax (with an up to 2 3/4% local option) with a progressive income tax system. The discussion nearly led to a riot at the state capital, and any talk of implementing a new state income tax was ended, with the legislature instead ultimately increasing the sales tax up to 7%. (anger over the income tax issue may still be a reason for continuing republican ascendancy in the state).
In 2002, Phil Bredesen was elected governor of Tennessee, largely thanks to his pledge to not even consider a state income tax in his first term. In 2003, Bredesen set out to reform TennCare in the least damaging way possible.
However, health care advocacy groups soon sued the state...and sued...and sued...preventing any of the needed reforms - which were overwhelmingly passed by the legislature and signed by Bredesen - from taking effect. The result was that TennCare continued to not get reformed and continued to suck the entire state budget dry. Ultimately, Bredesen did what virtually everyone in the state (including Tennessee's branch of American Academy of Pediatrics) felt had to be done: cut down TennCare. And that he did.
Bredesen did attempt to rectify the cuts in some other ways, however. He instituted several new "safety net" programs such as CoverRX, CoverTN, AccessTN, and CoverKids which helped provide some benefits to those who were cut from TennCare.
Perhaps it is Bredesen's experience with advocacy groups - groups which stopped his attempts to actually reform TennCare and left him with little other choice but to cut it - is a reason why they still leave a bad taste in his mouth (and indeed, in the mouths of most Tennesseans, including mine, "living" in the state - I was actually gone for college at the time - at the time)
Update
As for context for the Bredesen quote on the home page, there is this (hat tip to tabbycat in tenn):
http://www.knoxnews.com/...
The governor also downplayed the potential problem of having to work with groups who so vigorously opposed him. More important players will include pharmaceutical companies, hospital, doctors and medical equipment manufacturers, he said.
"What's going to have to happen is not putting together a coalition of liberal advocacy groups for health care, but a coalition of real people who are sitting here on one-sixth of the U.S. economy and try to find some common ground," he said.
(I'll also add this nugget in as well to get some added perspective from Bredesen himself:)
Bredesen said the move to cut the number of TennCare enrollees came after advocates "absolutely pushed me to the brink" by blocking other proposals to rein in the costs of the program that was expected to grow by $680 million in just one year.
"Their mantra was, you can do anything you want, but you can't reduce any benefits and you can't remove any people," he said. "They fought me every step of the way on ideological grounds, and basically pushed us to the point where we had no alternative to take some drastic action."