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Preserving Tenncare: True Homeland Security |
Current rating: 0 |
by James W. Polk
Email: communityjim (nospam) yahoo (unverified!) |
03 Dec 2004
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I have a hard time believing what I am hearing. Is our Democratic Governor, charged with protecting the health and safety- indeed, the homeland security- of Tennesseans instead angrily threatening to take away the very shield which protects hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans from the devastations of chronic disease, bankruptcy and homelessness? |
As one who voted for Governor Bredesen, I cannot express how disturbing it is to hear him describe the work of the Tennessee Justice Center in the frameworks of “guerilla warfare” or obstructionism. The work of Gordon Bonnyman could be more accurately described as faithful, honorable, and heroic. Mr. Bonnyman’s and the TJC’s unswerving dedication to human rights and constitutional law is America at its best.
Is our Governor really trying to paralyze the tongues of Mr. Bonnyman and other advocates who speak for the medically impoverished? Is he actually demanding that they comply with an effort to close the eyes and ears of the federal courts to the constitutional rights of citizens? How can this possibly result in justice?
Who is waging war upon whom here, and why? Might not the pharmaceutical/medicinal industry, insistent upon its unlimited “rights” to unbounded profits bear at least equal responsibility for cost overruns to Mr. Bonnyman’s? Might not the industry justly receive at least part of the governor’s anger? Whose pockets do the megabucks end up in, anyway?
From this vantage point, it appears Governor Bredesen is caught up in the temptation to blame citizens who are the victims of runaway corporate profiteering.
No one should be confused. Should the Governor’s threat to do away with TennCare be realized, current TennCare enrollees will not be the only losers. This will affect us all. The health care necessities of impoverished Tennesseans will not go away. Emergency rooms will be flooded with people who cannot pay. Families, non-profit clinics and local hospitals will be bankrupted trying to fill the gap. Good and innocent people will die for lack of vital yet overpriced medications. Insurers will demand higher premiums. More people with untreated mental illness will end up in the streets, jails and prisons. Local governments will have more and more homeless to count, shuffle around and/ or bury.
My hope? That the Governor will reconsider, and not wash his hands of the matter. He is making a life or death decision, this time for tens or even hundreds of thousands of innocent people at once. We elected him in confidence that he cares about all Tennesseans. We trust that he will make the hard, but right choice- for the health and wholeness of all. |
This work is in the public domain. |
