Are Tenncare work requirements helpful?

Tennessee officials have just submitted a proposal to add more wasteful and needless bureaucracy so that working families like my own have to jump through more hoops just to get the health coverage that we need.

State leaders want to spend $34 million to impose work reporting requirements on parents enrolled in Tenncare. We all believe in the value of work, but this new proposal isn’t about work. It’s about increasing red tape and forcing parents to report their work hours every single month, or to document that they should be exempt.

This costly proposal will burden employers and employees and have the government intruding on families’ decisions about whether a parent needs to be at home for their children.

Tenncare has been a lifesaver for our family, literally. When I had twins prematurely, they were born with a lung disease called bronchopulmonary dysplasia. This meant they didn’t get enough oxygen to their brains, which led to severe learning disabilities.

One of the twins had to be put on a breathing machine. The twins were in the hospital for four months. One died and had to be brought back to life.

There’s no way that we could have afforded the more than $1 million in medical bills without Tenncare, and we are so grateful.

My husband and I are also grateful to Tenncare for providing the healthcare that we need to stay healthy and able to care for our children. But we are worried. Parents who have Tenncare will be subjected to these new reporting requirements, even though most parents who can work already do.

My husband has a seasonal job fixing heating and air conditioning units. His fluctuating work hours could mean losing Tenncare if he doesn’t report enough hours in some months or reports too many hours in others.

Maintaining my husband’s coverage is critical for him and for our family because he is our breadwinner. I am proud of him for his courage and dedication to our family in overcoming drug addiction. Tenncare remains vital for the medications and treatment he needs to be able to work.

I home-school my daughter, and I will continue to do so over the next two years. She needs to be watched around the clock because of her special health care needs, and unfortunately, we have no outside family to help with this caregiving. On top of that, my husband and I are caregivers for his father, which is another fulltime job.

The state says I will be exempt from the work reporting requirement because of my home-schooling and caregiving responsibilities. But anyone with Tenncare experience knows that what the state promises and what it is able to deliver are often two different things.

My family has already experienced incredible difficulty just dealing with Tenncare’s paperwork and bureaucratic errors, and that’s before this new layer of red tape.

More time filling out forms each month, waiting endlessly on hold to speak to someone when the forms get lost and dealing with Tenncare’s paperwork errors means another fulltime job and less time for our family.

Tenncare is now seeking federal approval for these new reporting requirements. The federal government is accepting public comments until Feb. 7.

For our family and so many others, please submit a comment opposing Tenncare’s new reporting requirements by filling out this three-minute survey here at surveymonkey.com/r/ tenncaresurvey. Heather Brown is a mother of three children living in Waverly.