 | ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
|
« Secrecy and Lies | Main | Admitting to Voter Fraud » August 28, 2006A Letter to Bredesen
As Gov. Phil Bredesen - a multi-millionaire whose net worth some sources estimate at between $50 million and $150 million - made his trek Wednesday to the world-renowned Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for help with "flu-like" symptoms, people like Kim Fields of Millington struggled to survive.Gov. Bredesen, you'll recall, promised four years ago that if he was elected governor he would fix TennCare. Instead, he slashed it, tossed 170,000 sick/elderly/disabled/poor people off the TennCare rolls, used the money to balance the state budget, and than started a new but underfunded healthcare program, CoverTennessee, to cover himself politically for the 2006 election. CoverTennessee covers very few Tennesseans, and has no permanent funding. Meanwhile, people like Kim Fields are left to reduce the amount of medication they take, taking less than they need, because they can't afford it and Bredesen not only didn't fix TennCare, he made it worse for people like Fields. Without enough medication, Fields may go blind. The article includes the text of a letter-to-the-editor Fields sent to the paper. She wrote: I'm glad you had a fast recovery and wish you the best of health. At the same time, while you were in the hospital, did you give us, the people you removed from TennCare, any thought? For we are suffering.Don't be blinded by Gov. Bredesen's slick ads this fall, some of which no doubt will highlight "CoverTennessee," which covers very few people and likely won't cover much at all. Bredesen is a former HMO executive. HMOs raised profits by doing one thing well: limiting the amount of medical care their "beneficiaries" got. HMO executives and founders like Phil Bredesen "got well" financially by reducing the amount of medical care people could get, while raising or not reducing their premiums. That's the "business experience" Bredesen brought to the TennCare problem. Phil Bredesen didn't keep his promise to fix TennCare. Instead, he abandoned Kim Fields and 170,000 people like her. Cross-posted at the unofficial Jim Bryson for Governor blog. Posted in Tennessee Government News
Comments
Post a comment
Comments Policy: Your comment is subject to deletion if it is off-topic or includes foul language or personal attack. Readers, please email me if you find comments that include egregious violations of this policy. Comments may not post immediately - do not post twice!
|
|||||||||||
An 