GOP Lawmakers Block Tennessee’s Medicaid Expansion Plan

Republican Gov. Bill Haslam listens to a budget presentation at the state Capitol in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2014. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)
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Republican lawmakers blocked Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam’s (R) plan to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.

The Nashville Post reported on Wednesday that the Senate’s Health and Welfare Committee voted seven to four to stop the bill from advancing to the Senate floor. Seven of the committee’s 10 Republicans voted against it. The lone Democrat and three GOP legislators voted for it.

Haslam announced in December that he reached an agreement with the Obama administration on Medicaid expansion, but the plan needed to clear the state legislature. About 160,000 low-income Tennesseans would be covered by the program.

The governor’s plan would have given Medicaid enrollees two options: They could have either participated in a slightly modified version of traditional Medicaid or received a voucher to pay for private health insurance through their employer.

(h/t Greg Sargent)

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  1. All you have to do is point out how many blacks around the country are getting medical treatment while the white people in Tennessee are getting nothing. It will pass in a heartbeat.

    Crackers go absolutely berserk when they think that ni(CLANG!) are getting something that white people aren’t getting.

  2. This was widely predicted here in Tennessee.

    The legislature is controlled by hard-right-wing idiots, who will go to any lengths to punish poor people for being poor.

  3. the Senate’s Health and Welfare Committee

    I’ll take ironic committee names for $300

  4. Bill Haslam doesn’t understand that the good people of Tennessee have a God-given right to send their hard-earned tax dollars to Washington in order to receive nothing in return. Anything else is tyranny, dontchaknow.

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