Tennessee Senate Passes Health Care Compact Bill

The state Senate has passed a bill that might lead to Tennessee running health care programs.

Or maybe not.

The bill’s sponsor insists the “health care compact” is only an option.

Senator Mae Beavers of Mount Juliet says her bill would give Tennessee the choice to join other states, which would then ask Congress as a group to be allowed to run their own health care system.

If the feds approve, she says, billions of health care dollars would come back for the state to manage.

“We send so much money to Washington, and we only get a small percentage of that money back. With the compact, we’ll not only get that money that’s being spent on health care in Washington, we’ll get all of those administrative fees that are being spent in Washington, on health care.”

Beavers says the compact doesn’t require the state to run Medicare, but says that could be an option. Democrat Roy Herron expressed concern that it “could lead to doing away with Medicare and Medicaid as we know them.”

Georgia, Missouri and Oklahoma have already passed similar measures.

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Beavers has stressed several times that enacting the health care compact bill simply puts the state in line to form a compact with other states – it doesn’t actually commit the state to follow through.

“This bill if we pass it, would simply give us an option, of being a member of the compact, and making a decision, if Congress should approve it, to draw down health care money from Washington and manage our own health care money, instead of having all of those burdensome Washington regulations put on the health care money.”

The bill is a piece of model legislation being promoted by the national Health Care Compact Alliance.

In Tennessee the bill is SB 326 Beavers/HB 369 White

It passed the Senate 22-9, largely along party lines. Senators Charlotte Burks and Doug Henry, Democrats, voted with Republicans for the bill.

In the House the measure has been put off until the 2012 legislative session. Representative Mark White got the bill out of the House Health Subcommittee on a close, and partisan, vote. Then the bill stalled in the full House Health Committee.

Bridgit Bowden contributed to this story.