The worse thing is, that this man is a Democrat. He claims he is doing this because of a budget crisis, but Tennessee had a budget surplus last year. Before he became Governer, he was a CEO for an HMO. Surprise! Surprise! This bill will particularly hit the mentally ill , who will not be able to work if they are not medicated.
Link
According to the article Jeb Bush is happy to imitate his example.
Yeah he is one of those icky "republican lite" Dems TNR thinks is the future of the Democratic Party. He was on their cover this month.
On Jan. 10, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat elected in 2002 on a promise to rescue TennCare, announced he is cutting 323,000 low-income adults from the program and limiting services for 400,000 others. Like many other governors, Bredesen said that Tennessee's expanded Medicaid program is devouring the state budget and that he cannot afford what had been hailed as one of the most generous government health plans in the nation.
Bart and Atha Comiskey would have spent $9,300 last year on medication were it not for TennCare, which charges a small monthly premium and copayments. (Peyton Hoge For The Washington Post)
"It might not be the level of care we want to provide, but it's the level of care we can afford without bankrupting our state," said Bredesen, a former mayor who made millions as a managed-care executive.
The announcement sent shivers through health care advocates nationwide who see in TennCare's retreat the start of a bleak trend to scale back government-paid care at the same time the private sector is trimming benefits. A day later, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) proposed giving Medicaid clients vouchers for private health coverage, making Florida the first state to let insurers set benefits for poor clients. And this week, New York Gov. George E. Pataki (R) is scheduled to slash $1 billion from his state's Medicaid program.
As President Bush attempts to cut the federal deficit in half within five years, governors are girding for battle. Though eager to restructure Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for low-income Americans, the National Governors Association warned last month it would oppose "any deficit reduction strategy to simply shift federal costs to the states."
Despite all the TNR promotion, I'll bet this man is extremely unpopular a year from now when the poor and the mentally ill are being refused emergency room access. The trouble is, since he is a Dem, who can we replace him with? This is what drives me nuts about the one party state the Corporate Moderates in the DLC are creating. I think this guy deserves a primary challenge along with Lieberman.