TN says Noooooooo to expanding Medicaid. (Gov. Pat, take note.)
Tennessee’s moderate Republican governor has been talking up the idea of expanding Medicaid — which is basically 
the implementation of ObamaCare. He traveled to DC to talk up the strategy with feds. The TN governor even basked in the approval of the drive-by media. (Sound familiar?) He worked so hard, but forgot ONE key factor: the state legislature:
Gov. Bill Haslam spent nearly two years negotiating with federal officials to find an alternative plan for expanding Medicaid in the state. In the end, however, he didn’t spend enough time convincing state lawmakers that his plan was the right one.
Haslam’s Insure Tennessee plan was effectively killed Wednesday, after a Senate committee voted against the proposal.
Wednesday’s vote of a Senate health committee was the first time lawmakers were asked to vote up or down on Haslam’s proposal to expand Medicaid in the state.
Haslam’s plan would have used federal funds to expand coverage to about 280,000 additional Tennesseans. Those federal funds would cover 100 percent of the program’s cost for two years, after which federal support would drop down to 90 percent. The Tennessee Hospital Association had agreed to cover the state’s costs when that step-down occurs.
Insure Tennessee would have offered two new health care coverage options for Tennesseans earning below 138 percent of the federal poverty line, is outlined as a two-year pilot program. Though Haslam and plan supporters attempted to set their program aside from the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, it nonetheless struggled to find support, particularly among conservative Republicans.
The measure was defeated 7-4 in the Senate Health and Welfare committee, which included 10 Republicans and 1 Democrat.
Wednesday’s committee vote in the Senate ends prospects of approving Insure Tennessee, at least in its current form. Thatsaid, it also faced grim prospects in the House, where House Speaker Beth Harwell told reporters Wednesday she didn’t believe there were enough votes to pass the plan. […]
Of course, Democrats were completely unhinged in their response to the vote-down:
[…] Democrats, however, were less than pleased with the outcome.
U.S. Congressman Jim Cooper, a Nashville Democrat, issued a forceful statement.
“Tennesseans will die and hospitals will close as a result of our cruel state legislature,” Cooper said. “Rarely in state history have we seen such a devastating lack of leadership.” […]
*Don’t forget cats and dogs living together, and the onset of the apocalypse.*
Wow. He sounds like Big Bill Barber.
The North Carolina General Assembly sent a pretty clear message about medicaid expansion in 2013. The voters sent a pretty clear message about ObamaCare in 2010, 2012, and 2014. Yet, Gov. Pat and his DHHS secretary Aldona Wos are launching all kinds of trial balloons about expanding medicaid anyway. I am thinking that Gov. Pat and Lady Aldona are in for a similar type of smackdown to the one the GOP-led legislature in Tennessee delivered to Gov. Pat’s friend and fellow moderate GOPer Bill Haslam.
Why do Big Government Republicans want to grab hold of this Obamacare tarbaby? Republican voters, independent voters, and even a growing number of Democrat voters are sick of Obamacare and want it repealed, not parts of it expanded. Are these Big Government Republicans into political suicide? Why do they want to kill the enthusiasm among their voter base?
Aldona Wos was a political contributor but never involved in the GOP organization. While at least she is a Republican, unlike so many other McCrory appointees, she has not been in the trenches, and apparently does not see eye to eye with party activists when it comes to issues and policy. Under previous GOP governors, her department was headed by former GOP legislators who understood policy and had been in the trenches with party activists. The differing results are striking. The DHR (former name of DHHS) secretaries under Holshouser and Martin would never have been blatantly pushing Democrat policy like Wos does.
Wos’ department is also trying to negate legislative action to make abortion clinics safer by pushing rules that neuter that legislation, again pushing Democrat policy. Didn’t she notice the firestorm that just hit Renee Ellmers?
I suspect McCrory has been taking his cues from Wos all along, and I tend to think she is more to blame than he is. But McCrory needs to rethink his appointment strategy and start appointing policy oriented Republicans to key positions.
McCrory is a creature of the big cities and therefore will never understand nor agree with the values of the rural folk who make up the base of his Party. There really isn’t much difference between himself and people like Easley or Roy Cooper.
The same thing just happened in Wyoming where a Big Government Republican governor tried to do the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, and got shot down by the State Senate 19-11.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/07/us-usa-wyoming-medicaid-idUSKBN0LB04I20150207