this tenncare provided more coverage and people made a conscious decision. the problem with the plan is it dos not pay the cost of the care. that cost has been shifted over to the private sector. when you look at your health insurance costs going up each year, you're paying a tax on your private health insurance premiums caused by the increased useage of the public plan. in tennessee, the tenncare covered about 60% of the cost in actually providing the plan. medicare and another plan that we had, pays about 90% of the cost and uninsured pays somewhere in between. what i think will happen with this public plan is that once again, because politicians are involved in designing the plan, what will happen is, more and more things will be promised about what will be covered in the plan. but when it comes to paying for it and if we have time, we can discuss the massachusetts plan a little bit, what will happen is you will have a medicaid plan that doesn't pay the cost. you will he a medicare plan that doesn't pay the cost and you will have a public-funded, quote, c

roe was describing the tenncare plans. and the only way you could pay for it would be is to start cutting reimbursement to the health care providers, to the physicians, to the primary-care doctors that we so desperately need to be focusing and to be running our medical homes and to make sure that people are taking their medications. the emphasis on wellness and keeping people healthy, keeping them out of the doctors' office, out of the emergency room and hospitals and at the end of life, out of nursing homes and in their own homes. that's why i think it's a mistake to even go in that direction of government-run health care. i clearly feel and i know my colleagues on the floor tonight agree with me, madam speaker, that the private market place works and when we were here, my two colleagues that are with me tonight weren't in the house back in 2003, but i know they were following the debate very carefully and closely and maybe even felt that medicare part d was something we couldn't afford and certainly it added cost. if you

this was a medicaid waiver to form a managed care plan called tenncare and it was a rich blended care that provided a lot of care for not much money. what we found is that 45% of the people who got on tenncare who had private health insurance, dropped it. i asked the providers, what percent of your cost does tenn care pay? i went to our hospitals, 60% and medicare pays 90%. as you pointed out and the uninsured pays somewhere in between. what you pointed out clearly, what happens is that cost has shifted and more costs -- so your private health insurance goes up, not because what you do but what the government has done, and that is not pay the freight. if we get a public plan that will offer a lot of benefits, it won't pay the cost of services, once again causing a shift to the private health insurer. over time, i'm afraid you will end up with a single-payer system and that's not what the american people want. and that's something that will be discussed in great detail in the future. mrs. lummis: i might mention the three officers of our freshmen republican class who couldn't join us t