October 7, 2010: The Tennessee Department of Human Services opened a hotline on October 4, 2010, to take the first 2,500 requests for applications for its new TennCare program, called “Standard Spend Down.”
Standard Spend Down helps people who are ill but who wouldn’t otherwise be income-eligible for TennCare—Tennessee’s Medicaid program—to qualify. To be eligible, an individual must have high medical bills that offset household income to Medicaid-eligible levels, and her or she must be aged, blind, disabled or the caretaker relative of a Medicaid-eligible child.
The $32.7 million Standard Spend Down program has a cap of 7,000 enrollees and is funded by $9.6 million in voluntary fees paid by Tennessee hospitals and by federal matching funds for indigent health care.
Tennessee’s DHS closed the application request hotline after just over one hour of operation, with the first 2,500 applications already requested. The hotline will open again after the first round of applications has been processed.
For additional information about insurance coverage in Tennessee, visit the SHADAC Data Center, where you can get up-to-date state-level coverage estimates from the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the American Community Survey (ACS).