Tennessee Health Care Compact Fails as Republicans Sit on Hands

Several Republican members of the Tennessee House refused to vote on a Health Care Compact bill Tuesday night. And without a 50-vote majority, the bill died – after two years of partisan maneuvering to pass it.

The idea of a health care compact is that states would provide public health services, like Medicare, within their own boundaries – using money which the federal government would hand over. It has been described as a “message” that the state opposes the federal health care overhaul started by President Obama.

Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey said after the legislature adjourned he regrets the loss of the bill.

“We don’t know what the Supreme Court’s going to do, we don’t know what the next presidential election is going to do, so that would’ve been a tool in the toolbox.”

The measure needed 50 votes in the 99 member House. It got only 46 with well over a dozen Republicans simply failing to vote.

The defeat doesn’t stop Republicans from pursuing the idea, but it does put off any further action until the legislature returns in January.

Two years ago the Health Care Compact authorization failed when the Republican sponsors in the House and Senate couldn’t agree on the language until the last minute – and the GOP votes they were counting on had already left for home.

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The House had added amendments on Monday to protect senior citizens and veterans. Shortly after 7 p.m. the House was asked to approve a conference committee report that stripped those amendments out.

The current bill, SB 326 Beavers/HB 369 Pody had passed in the Senate last year. Monday it passed in the House with a half-dozen amendments including some policy statements that Rep. Mark Pody, the House sponsor, said were out of place.

The current bill simply gives the state the option of joining a health care compact, Pody said.

Arguments that the state should join a super-committee of several states in a “health care compact” have been debated for three years now.

Senator Mae Beavers, the Senate sponsor, said yesterday that the House policy amendments would “wreck the whole train.”

The conference committee agreed with Beavers and dropped all the House amendments except one that dealt with technical issues – Congressional agreement and a state framework to deal with health care systems would be required for the state to go forward with the Health Care Compact.

The bill was essentially the same one passed by the Senate last year. The Senate agreed 20-12. But the measure failed in the House 45-26-4.

The House vote is here, but this link doesn’t list those who simply didn’t touch their buttons at all – some 24 members, of whom eight were excused (actually gone from the Hill). Two are Democrats and 14 are Republicans.

Daniel Potter and Chelsea Kallman contributed to this report.