Tuesday 15 January 2008The TennCare Bureau plans to ask a federal court to lift a long-standing injunction that keeps the program from checking the eligibility of about 154-thousand enrollees. TennCare Director Darin Gordon says a primary goal is to identify current enrollees who are currently eligible for benefits and ensuring that they remain on the program. The enrollees in question received federal SSI cash benefits at one time and therefore automatically qualified for Medicaid which later became TennCare. Because of the injunction those enrollees continue to have TennCare coverage even though they may no longer receive SSI benefits or be otherwise eligible for Medicaid in any other category. This includes people who now reside in other states are incarcerated or earn too much money to otherwise qualify for TennCare. The state needs court approval to determine whether these people are still eligible for TennCare and remove anyone who no longer qualifies for the program. This will likely shrink the TennCare rolls by about 16-hundred people. TennCare is Tennessee’s Medicaid managed-care program. It serves about one-point-two-million low-income children pregnant women and disabled Tennesseans.
