opinion

Insure Tennessee would cover 30,000 people in Nashville

It's time for our state to move forward with Insure Tennessee.

Our uninsured citizens need it. Our economy needs it. Our sense of humanity demands it.

I applaud Gov. Bill Haslam for proposing a plan to make federally subsidized health care available through vouchers and savings accounts to hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans, including an estimated 30,000 in Nashville.

That's 30,000 people in our city – nearly 5 percent of our population – who are struggling in a way that isn't necessary.

When our neighbors struggle, we all struggle. We see that our city isn't everything it can be, and we see the strain on Nashville's hospitals, which are forced to eat the costs of unreimbursed care.

This is particularly damaging to the city's safety-net hospital, Nashville General Hospital at Meharry, and it can have a devastating effect on rural and small-town hospitals throughout Tennessee.

This makes no sense. Our city is the health care capital of the nation, if not the world. Nashville has always been a leader in finding solutions to health care problems.

For issues like this, you turn to people who understand the issue. Hospital administrators and health care entrepreneurs, the people who help fuel the city's economic engine and create tens of thousands of jobs, make it clear that it's simply good business to help the least among us come off the rolls of the uninsured.

Insure Tennessee would create a more efficient healthcare system and incentives for healthier living that ultimately would prevent insurance premiums from increasing as much as they have been. And the money it would bring into the state would stimulate spending and create jobs here.

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The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, a group that is well known for its extensive work to create economic prosperity and opportunity, has endorsed Insure Tennessee, telling its members that the program would be funded by a 100 percent federal match through 2016. After 2016, the federal funding would pay 90 percent to 100 percent of the cost, and funds from the state's hospital assessment would bridge the gap, meaning no new taxes for Tennesseans.

The program would automatically end if the funding model changed in any way.

I spend a lot of time talking about health, from proactive exercise and a good, nutritious diet to preventive measures. More than 35 percent of children in Nashville are overweight or obese, which is truly troubling.

On Thursday I kicked off 100 Miles with the Mayor, a community-wide health initiative in which I plan to walk, bike or paddle 100 miles across Davidson County over the span of 19 days, starting May 3. I'm inviting community members to join me and learn about the many greenways, bikeways and waterways available to all of us.

But not everyone can practice preventive health care the way many of us can. If 30,000 Nashville residents can't go see a doctor and count on insurance to help pay the bill, that's a big problem – a problem that our governor, a good man, is trying to fix.

To have 30,000 people without insurance in your city should matter to any mayor. I hope the General Assembly will take one more look at Insure Tennessee and debate it on its true merits as healthcare and economic policy.

I hope our state government will see the need to give the citizens of our great state, from one end to the other, a better chance to live long, healthy, productive lives. We need more attention to sound financial decisions and care for those in need – and less attention to politics.

It makes sense for our economy, and it makes even better sense for our people.

Karl Dean is the sixth mayor of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County.