The reason he hasn't come up with a way to fix TennCare is because there isn't one. 23% of the people in this state are on TennCare. There is no way that you can sit here and tell me that in this economic climate, 23% need to be on TennCare. You say poor, sick, old, and disabled are losing their medical care. Poor and sick yes (lazy and on drugs also), but old people and disabled people are covered by other programs like Medicare or would have been covered by MedicAid. If there is a so called crisis in health care, government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem. There is no way that you could have a socialized medicine program and there not be abuses like we have seen with TennCare. Like I have said before, I want to get rid of it. I want to get rid of any government program. But if cutting 300,000 people from that black hole of fiscal irresponsibility called TennCare is the best we can get from Phil, I'll take it. That action by a Democrat of all people is the closest thing to an act of conservatism I have seen in a long time. Too bad there aren't any conservatives in Washington who want to cut worthless programs.

Glen - you are right that there are too many people on TennCare. But Bredesen isn't reforming the program to weed them out. He is merely taking a meat cleaver to the rolls and axing all of the adults in the non-Medicaid-eligible portion of the program. Some of them DO need to be on TennCare, some don't. Oh, and he's leaving all non-Medicaid eligible children on the rolls even though some of them DON'T need to be on it.

In short, yes he is cutting spending on TennCare, but he is not actually reforming the program. The underlying problems remain.