Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has proposed expanding Medicaid to cover more poor residents of his state, although the plan, if accepted by regulators and conservative legislators, would not follow traditional Medicaid rules, The New York Times' Abby Goodnough reported. Haslam said he still opposes the Obamacare plan to expand Medicaid to everyone earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, but he is proposing a second option to use "federal Medicaid funds available under the law to cover some 200,000 low-income residents through their employer’s health insurance plan or the state’s Medicaid program," Goodnough reported.
Hospitals have found that the amount they spend on charity care or uncompensated care has risen in states that don't have the Medicaid expansion, but fallen in states that do have the expansion.
There is an interesting twist in Haslam's plan that would keep the expansion revenue-neutral for Tennessee, Goodnough reports: Tennessee Hospital Association has agreed to pay expansion costs beyond what the federal government covers.
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