NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – Tennessee House Republicans focused Thursday on what they call the “CARE Plan,” which the lawmakers say is a “first step” to offer solutions to a wide variety of healthcare issues.
“These issues have been in the making for decades so it’s unrealistic to say we can fix this overnight,” explained House Republican Caucus Chair Cameron Sexton during a Capitol Hill news conference. “It will take time.”
CARE is an acronym for “Consumerism, Access, Rural, Empowering.”
According to a one-page outline of the plan, “Our transformed system of CARE in Tennessee will focus on the patient’s physical and fiscal well-being through consumerism, increasing access, improving rural health systems, and empowering patients to ensure individuals and families can make medical decisions instead of insurance companies or government.”
Rep. Sexton said the plan also referred to things like promoting competition among health care providers, pharmacy benefits manager reform, telemedicine for rural areas and even recruiting more physicians to Tennessee.
Most of the CARE plan is in a series of bills that will be heard this session.
They include a request to the federal government to have Medicaid money for Tennessee sent to the state in the form of a no-strings-attached block grant.
During his weekly news conference, Republican Lt. Governor Randy McNally who presides over the Senate echoed that the CARE plan will be very much a work in progress with likely input from Governor Bill Lee’s administration.
“I think it will be further refined in committee,” said McNally. And possibly on the floor of the House and working with the administration.”
The Democrats, who make up about a quarter of the Tennessee legislature, dissed the care plan as a “dishonest” way to avoid using available federal money to expand the state’s Medicaid system TennCare.
“Unlike the legislatures of virtually every other state in the United States, the Republicans who currently control the Tennessee legislature have resolutely refused to expand health care,” said House Democrat Caucus Chair Mike Stewart.
