Lessons From TennCare

By Kleinheider Posted on July 20, 2009 at 9:05 am

Marsha Blackburn believes that national health care reform may go the way of TennCare — and that isn’t good:

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) was a Tennessee state senator through much of the TennCare problems and believes it is a forecast of what would happen under federal health care “public option” plan. While supporters of the Tennessee program said it would save money, it wound up eating 38 percent of the state’s budget, she said.

“As a result of this, insurance rates for those who have private coverage were going through the roof,” Blackburn told a gathering at the conservative Heritage Foundation last week.

“There is no example that you can point to that shows where having private insurance in competition with the public option brings the costs down. It leads to exploding costs,” she said.

Gov. Phil Bredesen’s office referred CNSNews.com to the TennCare office for comment. A TennCare spokesperson Carol Fite told CNSNews.com on Friday that no one in the office would be able to speak about the matter that day.

SEE ALSO: Jeff Woods

permalink

Comments