Nashville Hospital Execs Hope President’s Visit Helps Insure Tennessee More Than Hurts

Some Nashville area hospital executives plan to be in the room as President Obama hails the Affordable Care Act from an elementary school in Madison. Health care leaders hope the campaign-style event might give some kind of boost to the unsuccessful effort to expand Medicaid in Tennessee.

The head of the Tennessee Hospital Association will attend. So will three executives from Saint Thomas Health Systems, including president and chief operating officer Karen Springer. She acknowledges President Obama’s lack of popularity in the Republican-dominated state legislature. But she figures a visit from the commander-in-chief couldn’t hurt Medicaid expansion efforts too badly.

“You know, I guess it could. Although at this point we’ve been up against the battle over a couple of times now. So I’m not sure it hurts us any more than we’ve already been in this battle,” Springer said.

Springer calls it “ridiculous” that a state with one of the largest health care industries hasn’t taken federal money to insure more of the state’s working poor, including 30,000 in Davidson County alone.

The full legislature has still not had a chance to vote on Medicaid expansion, which has been killed in committees twice.

A spokesman for Vanderbilt University Medical Center said no one from the hospital is participating in the White House’s event. Nashville’s largest for-profit hospital chains have not confirmed whether they are making an appearance or not.