At a time when presidential candidates are talking about ways to reform our health care system to cover more people, and while more an more states are taking advantage of federal matching funds to triple their budgets for state/federal medicaid partnerships, the state of Tennessee is cutting hundreds of thousands of medically fragile Tennesseans from TennCare!! WHY??!
TennCare is going about the process of "re-evaluating" those in the Daniels/SSI category (about 150,00 people) and the Standard SpendDown/Medically needy category (about 50,000 people). About 100,000 of the Daniels/SSI and about 40,000 of the SpendDown WILL LOSE THEIR COVERAGE THIS YEAR!!
These are people who need continuous care to survive: people who need dialysis, HIV/AIDS medication, oxygen, cancer treatment, people who have severe mental illnesses, who are disabled, premature babies, and people with hemophilia--just to name a few. MOST are extremely LOW-INCOME individuals.
WHY are we cutting these people? WHY are we creating more uninsured--adding to the million or so who are already uninsured? WHY do this when our hospitals and health care providers are already over-burdened?
IT IS NOT BECAUSE OF MONEY!! NO, The budget for TennCare has 750 MILLIONS (plus) dollars of surplus this year. AND, if the administration would take advantage of the easily accessible, FREE, federal matching funds (of 2/1) then we are talking about BILLIONS of available funds to care for sick Tennesseans.
I want to know why no one is shining a light on this!
The Tennessee Health Care Campaign seems to be the only organization that is educating communities and trying to fight these unneccessary cuts!
The Memphis Area Local Organizing Group of the Tennessee Health Care Campaign is having a meeting with our state Legislators to discuss these cuts and other issues of concern.
Thursday, April 24th
6-8pm
Prescott Memorial Baptist Church
961 Getwell Rd. Memphis, TN 38104
Free and Open to ALL!
Come share your stories and struggles with legislators.
Our voices, united, can stop this death sentence!
