Governor Phil Bredesen says he’s spending much of his time working with Senators in Washington on the healthcare overhaul bill introduced by Max Baucus. Bredesen calls the potential cost for state’s “scary.”
The Baucus bill requires states to expand their Medicaid programs to take on more of the uninsured. The start date isn’t until 2014, but state revenues in Tennessee aren’t expected to return to pre-recession levels until that time.
Governor Bredesen says the state will have other needs for that money, like repairing the state’s pension fund and giving the first employee raises in six years.
“There won’t be new prisons built during that period. There won’t be much in the way of capital improvements in the state during that period. So it’s very scary for governors to be saying as soon as the revenues get back there, the federal government is going to come in and say here’s how you’re going to spend your new money.”
Initial cost estimates for at least one of the overhaul bills topped $800 million for Tennessee. The governor says he has no idea where the state would get anything over $200 million to pay for reforms.
Bredesen, a Democrat, has been involved with negotiations as part of his leadership role in the National Governors Association. He says governors support health care overhaul so long as the federal government doesn’t push a significant portion of the cost on states.
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