What’s happening with the Medicaid block grants? Lee still ‘exploring’
Gov. Bill Lee speaks to reporters on March 19, 2019, about his proposal to introduce an education savings account program in Tennessee. (Erik Schelzig, Tennessee Journal)
Gov. Bill Lee is assembling a Health Care Modernization Task Force, but appears not to have decided whether to pursue a Medicaid block grant from the federal government, the Daily Memphian reports.
Lee told the publication that his office is putting together the task force made up of health care industry members, providers, and patients to come up with ways to cut costs and “increase access and affordability for everybody.”
The governor is still “exploring the idea” of block grants, he said at a recent event in Shelbyville.
“If we pursue [a block grant], we’ll be the first state in the country to do it,” Lee said. “And that is to take federal funding for our TennCare-Medicaid population and spend it in a way that allows us to do it more effectively in Tennessee than the way the federal government tells us we have to.”
House Minority Leader Karen Camper, who served on former Speaker Beth Harwell’s 3-Star Healthy Task Force, questioned the point of another group to study the issue.
“Now we are in a different General Assembly, with new leaders and a new governor. Not only have the players changed, but we are also working in the shadows of the Medicaid block grant waiver, which was passed by our General Assembly. We do not yet know the consequences of this legislation and how the federal government will respond to this waiver request,” she told the Daily Memphian.
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