TN's Medicaid budget solution: let the sick suffer

One way to solve the problem of state budget crunches and growing Medicaid costs is to cut people off entirely. Missouri's doing it. Bob Herbert's editorial in today's NYT notes Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen is doing it, too:

Thanks to Mr. Bredesen's leadership, Tennessee is dumping nearly 200,000 residents, some of them desperately ill, from TennCare, the state's Medicaid program. Cindy Mann, a research professor and executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute, concisely characterized the governor's efforts:

'What he's decided to do is save health care costs simply by not giving people health care.'

Link (free reg req'd)