opinion

The broken legislature and Insure Tennessee

So, here's what we know so far.

First, that trumped-up committee of state senators killed Insure Tennessee. This outrage came in February.

It not only kept health insurance from a quarter-million Tennesseans who need it, but also sabotaged any chance of a straight-up vote on the program's merits by the rest of the state legislature. This allowed most of the culprits to remain in darkness.

Next, two weeks ago, we learned that all this callous disregard of human suffering was only the visible front side of a deeper, mean-spirited political hit job. Many of these same legislators had smugly been accepting state aid for their own health coverage, as if it were their special birthright.

Then, when this newspaper insisted on seeing the full extent of the insiders' financial privilege, the culprits squawked like scalded chickens. (From where I sit, the best part of this well-deserved uproar has been how The Tennessean has weighed in to exposing such cynical unfairness in the backroom. Otherwise, all the "powers that be" would never have challenged each other sufficiently to get the story public, fearful they would jeopardize their own horse-trading on other issues.)

Now, this past week, we have learned the extent to which these legislators don't even represent the opinions of Tennesseans, undoing their only claim to any credibility. All the excuses, all the dodges, all their sitting in smug silence during so-called public discussions — all this is crumbling now and for all the world to see.

The latest Vanderbilt Poll, released on Wednesday, makes clear that Tennessee citizens outside the government are much more reasonable — favoring expanded health coverage — than their so-called "representatives" inside the government.

The new poll found about two-thirds of Tennesseans wanting Insure Tennessee to be voted on. It is not "Obamacare," as the opponents bleated, but a separate solution the Haslam administration spent 21 months working on before it was torpedoed in February. It would use federal funds to expand Medicaid coverage. In other words, the bill has already been paid, by Tennesseans, through our federal taxes.

"There is a major disconnect between the thinking of Tennesseans and the action of our state legislature," said Professor John Geer, the political scientist who is co-director of the Vanderbilt Poll.

"There is across-the-board support for Insure Tennessee," he said, "and even more support for letting the full legislature vote on the bill. Yet there does not seem to be much interest among our legislators to discuss and vote on this bill supported by Gov. Bill Haslam — who himself remains wildly popular."

In other words, Tennesseans are knocking on the door — wanting fairness and reason and good health care to come out — but our elected reps won't let us in.

The legislature is broken. Its leaders aren't leading, and too many of its members are paralyzed by an unreasoning fear of their next elections. Never mind that such elections are more than a year away.

Tennessee's political tradition has been one of moderation, not extremism. We are a solid Republican state now, but Tennessee is not an ultra-right-wing state. And the new polling suggests that voters in the legislative districts are not as far to the right as how the representatives behave in Nashville.

The only sensible explanation is that many of these representatives and senators simply dread the power of money and of out-of-state influence on Tennessee's Republican primaries. The incumbents want to be inoculated somehow from any threat of an even more conservative primary opponent and the danger that out-of-state interests would pour money into that challenger's campaign fund. This is where the fear is based, not from inside their own districts.

This is a scandal. And all but the handful of heroes, those who want to resurrect Insure Tennessee, will pay a price when that next election time comes. Tennessee voters, in the main, are sensible and practical-minded. We don't appreciate either inside dealing or outside meddling.

The past few months of news coverage, columns and editorials have clearly roused a once-silent majority of Tennesseans. This is obvious now, and the campaign to save Insure Tennessee should focus on this new groundswell.

The drumbeat for justice grows louder.

Keel Hunt is a Tennessean columnist. Reach him at Keel@TSGNashville.com.