Gov. Bill Haslam
Gov. Bill Haslam (R-TN) was one of few Republican governors working with the Obama administration to find a way to bring Medicaid expansion to his state in a way that state legislators would accept. He failed, not with the administration, but with his
fellow Republicans.
The Senate Health and Welfare Committee voted against passing Haslam's Insure Tennessee. Only four of the 11 committee members voted in favor of the plan.
The vote comes minutes after House Speaker Beth Harwell said she doesn't think there are enough votes in the House to pass the plan. […]
Harwell said she gauged member's interest Wednesday on Insure Tennessee, Haslam's plan to provide 280,000 low-income Tennesseans with federally funded health insurance. While declining to provide a vote count, she said she did tell Haslam where her caucus stands on the plan.
That opposition is despite the fact that hospitals had
agreed to foot the state's part of the bill for the expansion, because the state's hospitals need the funds to continue to operate. But hatred of the government prevailed, with one opponent arguing that no matter what the law says about the expansion program being voluntary for states, if they took it in now they'd be locked into it forever. Because, Beacon Center of Tennessee CEO Justin Owen testified, "Can you trust the federal government?"
What you can trust is that the the plight of 280,000 Tennesseans doesn't matter at all to their Republican representatives.