Republicans REFUSE to Expand Medicaid in Tennessee… AGAIN!

Gov. Bill Haslam made another push for Medicaid expansion in Tennessee, but just like before, a handful of extremist Republicans nixed the idea. This time, it was killed in secret in a closed-door meeting. Failure (once again) to expand Medicaid means we’re (once again) losing billions of dollars that will now be given to other states, (once again) leaving our rural hospitals vulnerable to more closures, and (once again) leaving us without resources that we could use to tackle the #OpioidEpidemic and give hundreds of thousands of hard working Tennesseans access to affordable health care.

Republican House Majority Leader Glen Casada “prevented any proposal from making it out of the room.” https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/13/can-tennessee-expand-health-care-working-poor-haslam-asks-behind-closed-doors/511878002/ Also opposed to bringing the issue up for a vote (once again) was State Senator Bill Ketron, who is now campaigning to become Rutherford county mayor.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville, said it best when he said “the ability for a handful of Republicans to nix any talk of Medicaid expansion outside of the normal legislative process is a serious problem…’It shows the process is broken when hyperpartisan leaders in a closed room can end all debate on whether the state of Tennessee is going to take such a momentous step…we have hundreds of thousands of people who are uninsured, because the legislature has decided that they should be uninsured.'”