Nashville Public Radio
By: Blake Farmer
The Tennessee legislature has designed a budget maneuver to pay for proposed rules around Medicaid. Republican states, including Tennessee, are adding requirements that Medicaid recipients have to work if they can. But enforcement is proving to be costly. It’s been hard for Tennessee’s Medicaid officials to estimate the expense of making sure 1.4 million TennCare members are working, caring for family or in school. Their best guess is $38 million to start. They won’t even take a stab at the cost in future years.
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“We’re going to pay $10,000 per person we’re dis-enrolling,” Michele Johnson of the Tennessee Justice Center told the Senate Health Committee. “We can’t afford that in our state.” Johnson contends the program could easily cost more than it saves.
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