April 18, 2005

How Many People Could TennCare Keep For $870 Million?

From the San Francisco Chronicle comes this:

The federal government is struggling to find money to pay for such basics as prescription drugs for the elderly. At the same time, government reports estimate that $1 in every $10 spent by the $300 billion Medicare system goes to erroneous, abusive or fraudulent payments. In California, an incomplete accounting identified $553 million in improper payments last year, according to a December Medicare report.

TennCare is an $8.7 billion program. That's $870 million in likely waste, fraud and abuse.

One would think that a governor with expertise in the healthcare management industry would be able to devise a better system. Instead, Gov. Bredesen rejects incremental reforms that might save money and proposes only to slash 323,000 sick, poor, elderly and disabled people from the program while the systemic faults of the program are to be left unreformed.

How many of those 323,000 poor, sick, old and disabled Tennesseans whom Bredesen aims to kick off the TennCare rolls could stay on TennCare if $870 million in waste, fraud and abuse was ended?

All of them.
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For more scrutiny of the Bredesen record, see Bredesen Watch.