I read about this in an article today and came over to your blog to see what you had to say.

I'm sure you'll keep us posted on this development.

I wasn't very impressed with your speculation until I read the ending and slapped my head, Doh! That made me realize that my victory dance may have been a little premature. However, one thing that I am sure will have to happen for Bredesen to enact any kind of state program would be Federal approval. Bredesen is playing his cards very tightly to his chest on this one.

I wasn't very impressed with your speculation until I read the ending and slapped my head, Doh! That made me realize that my victory dance may have been a little premature. However, one thing that I am sure will have to happen for Bredesen to enact any kind of state program would be Federal approval. Bredesen is playing his cards very tightly to his chest on this one.

I wasn't very impressed with your speculation until I read the ending and slapped my head, Doh! That made me realize that my victory dance may have been a little premature. However, one thing that I am sure will have to happen for Bredesen to enact any kind of state program would be Federal approval. Bredesen is playing his cards very tightly to his chest on this one.

"The answer is complex. In fact, it could be yes and no at the same time."

Hmmm...sounds like a plan Mr. Kerry could get behind.

I don't know. Bonnyman's fought every change tooth and nail since Day One. He's never been one to compromise. I can't see him accepting anything less than full coverage for everyone now on the program. I'd even expect him to go to court to reverse Bredesen's Executive Order on any number of grounds, just to fight it.

Bredesen was elected because a lot of folks expected his background in health care to enable him to "cure" TennCare. I suspect he gave it the ol' college try, saw what he was up against, and has now thrown up his hands in disgust. We can only hope.

      You've overlooked a possibility: Bredesen will shut down TennCare, he'll put his replacement program into effect, and then the various "advocates" will sue to expand the program.  After all, they can claim that "it's really TennCare with the name changed," so it must be bound by all the previous court rulings.

      Whee!  Ain't it fun when democracy is abolished?

OMG. Now I remember his background in running a health provider. I'm starting to believe that he, better than anyone, could actually find that *better way* of leveraging public and private health care - effective health care reform.

I think his "new program" must include a major restructuring, but with limited disruption of functioning. Meanwhile, Bredesen will get the legislature to pass a bill protecting the this program from such litigation.

I have high hopes for Bredesen.

I just stumbled in here from Instapundit, so forgive me if I don't seem to know quite where I am.......it's only because I don't.

This is the first I learned about TN having this massively expensive government-provided healthcare boobdoggle. My husband and I are planning to move to TN in the early spring. We have our own healthcare.

What concerns me is the cost of this monstrosity and how to curb it. It seems like an uphill battle against the worst bureaucratic cancer imaginable all because of the usual suspects - lawyers.

We're staunch Republicans, and normally I'd say this governor is just scamming the public like most Democrat office-holders do, but this at least sounds like he is trying to resolve this in a fiscally healthy way. Is the governor a conservative Democrat, by any chance? I certainly hope so, because one of the reasons we're leaving the state we live in now is fiscal irresponsibility of a longstanding Democrat-controlled legislature.

Can anybody give me a little perspective on TN's governor? And how is that a full 1/4 of TN residents don't have private, self-pay healthcare?

I thank you in advance.

i've voted straight republican before, and this year i was happy to vote for bush and bredesen. sorry no caps; baby in arm.

let me revise that; i don't think bredesen ran this year. got carried away with alliteration. but i would have been.

Bredesen is a fiscal conservative who has balanced the state budget without tax increases, unlike his predecessor.

Kitty Burglar (love the name!), to answer your question a bit more than Bill did: Bredesen is a nominal Democrat who will campaign for his party friends and for those whose support he needs (Speaker of the House and the Lt. Gov.). He's said he became a Dem because they most resemble how he feels, but says it in a way that doesn't sound enthusiastic.

He is a fiscal conservative, but there are wrinkles. After years of being told that the only solution for TN's budget woes was to create an income tax, which is highly unpopular here, and an incredible display of public anger in weeks of sustained demonstrations at Capitol Hill, Dems were swept from office, with the exception of Bredesen, who beat the Republican who sounded a lot like him. Bredesen promptly cut the budget by 5 to 9% (estimates vary). Again, there were cries of woe from those who depend on government money. But the state has survived and prospered none the less.

But.... Bredesen has made it clear that he will restart public spending when the budget allows it. He balanced his budget by keeping state funds ($30 million or so) normally given to cities. In spite of increasing revenues (the state took in almost $700 million more than budgeted this fiscal year) he has neither restarted sending those funds to cities nor cut the 7.75% state sales tax. All this money is being kept in Nashville and being quietly dispensed.

So, as TN gets more and more prosperous, as we come out of the recession and pick up steam, Bredesen's beginning to slough off his fiscal luster. That doesn't portend well for the future at all. He bears continued watching.

You don't say what part of TN you're moving to, but I hope it's not Memphis, were I am. We are the majority of those 400,000 folks who will be cut from TennCare, and our local Regional Medical Center is already cash-strapped! Both the city and county have big budget hemorrhages that are promising increased property taxes. City government just tried to impose a "payroll" (ie "income") tax on non-Memphis residents who work in the city!

Mike, thanks so much for such a full reply. I appreciate it very much.

We are moving to eastern TN. We will be looking for a rural property butting up to the Cherokee Nat'l Forest, most likely near (east of) Elizabethton, or perhaps a bit further south toward Greeneville. We will be renting briefly, probably in the tri-cities or Greeneville area, while we look for just the right property.

We presently live in CA, and the condition of keeping revenues at the state capitol rather than distributing them to the county municipal governments is what prompted us to wrest those monies away from the hands of our Democrat-controlled legislature via a ballot referendum last week. You may also be aware that we recalled former Governor Gray "The Corruptionator" Davis last year and replaced him with a moderate Republican, Arnold "The Governator" Schwarzenegger. We immensely enjoyed removing Davis, probably the most corrupt, tax-and-spend governor in our history. Davis managed to take a $16B (that's BILLION) surplus built up by sixteen years of sound management by Republican governors and transform it into a $38B (that's BILLION) deficit in four years, which, along with imposing even more draconian regulatory controls than we already had to contend with, devastated our economy. I won't bore you with the hundreds of stories of his corruptions and blunders that we suffered for over four years before we finally dumped his thieving, conniving butt into the unemployment lines. It was glorious.

I wish you success with managing your fiscal affairs until someone more trustworthy gets into office, although it sounds like things could be worse were you saddled with some other member of the Democrat panoply of fiscal mismanagers. Coming from CA, we certainly recognize and are wary of the signs of incremental acts of disregard for the fiscal will of the taxpayers.

My husband and I followed the stories of red-blooded Volunteers surrounding your state capitol over the legislative effort to impose an income tax, and read about the demonstrators' success with glee. In fact, that was one of the reasons we decided to give TN a look in terms of our pending relocation, and then fell in love with the gentle pastoral beauty of eastern TN, as well as the wamth and well-mannered civility of your people.

From one who has seen the fiscal and economic havoc and devastation Democrats wreak at the state government level, I advise Tennesseans to purge as many of them from control of your state government as possible. Frankly, we were surprised and disappointed to learn TN elected a Democrat to the statehouse, but of course we are willing to withhold full judgment until we see him in action. Dumping the Tenncare program seems like a very good idea and if Bredesen can be reined in from stepping up spending and be forced to distribute revenues more fully to municipal governments, he may turn out to be not such a bad choice.

I wish you continuing success with your growing prosperity.

Volunteers rock!

KittyBurglar,

Did you see every posts you had at SKB was deleted? I think you will like it much better here at Bill's site. You had some great posts but free speech is hard to find at SKB.

Yep, I sure did. Did you see any of my posts from today there before they were deleted? I'm assuming from what you just said that you did.

BTW, I wrote a LOT of posts there. It probably took some time to go through and delete all of them.

The only thing that motivates that kind of action is fear.

Now, what do you suppose SKB has to fear from me?

I don't think he thought I was a wingnut. I think he was afraid the lefties on there would strike up too many rational, reasonable conversations with me. That's the threat, and that's why he had to delete all my posts, the vast majority of them being that lengthy civil exchange with Rochambeaux. He doesn't want them wandering off the reservation. He has to keep up the hatred.

I have a dynamic IP so he can only ban me temporarily. If I want in, all I have to do is logoff and then reconnect. But I'm not the type to hang out somewhere I'm not wanted, and he knows that.

Were your post today about TennCare? Did you have any post with SKB? I wish I could have seen your last post.

http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_3327525,00.html

The article above in the Knoxville News Sentinel may explain SKB's behavior. Tennessee was 62 % for Bush. That had to be difficult for SKB. I thought what made his site special was local issues.

The above post is mine.

Also, here's a correction:

"Within about a half hour, all those posts were deleted. I didn't know ALL my previous posts had been deleted until you pointed it out to me."

It should read, ".......until Bob pointed it out...."

http://web.knoxnews.com/silence/archives/001885.html

Support free speech on blogs.

I left a note over there.

lakegary said:

"Hmmm...sounds like a plan Mr. Kerry could get behind."

Yeah, before he got in front of it.

Bill, the 'Never Forget' video is terrific - very moving indeed. And no, I will never foregt.

Nicely done.

Thank you.

I don't know if readers here are interested in the shakeup at the CIA, but there's an excellent, informed discussion going on about it over at The Belmont Club: http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/11/cia-shakeup-in-july-2004-marc-ruel.html

Bill, in view of your outstanding video and the themes represented on your site, I thought this piece from The Times of London would be of interest to you. Since I can't seem to find any more current blogs here to post comments to, I'm leaving it here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1359782_1,00.html