Daniels is a TennCare Medicaid category of eligibility. Other TennCare Medicaid categories are “Pregnant Women or Breast or Cervical Cancer.” There are over 150,000 people in the Daniel’s TennCare Medicaid category. These are folks who originally went on TennCare Medicaid because at some time they received a SSI (Social Supplemental Income) check.  At some point all of these folks lost their SSI check; however, they remained on TennCare Medicaid because there of a federal court order referred to as “Daniels.”

This federal court order is an agreement between the state and Daniels (The first name on the Class Action Suit). The agreement came about because the state was found to have violated the SSI recipients’ constitutional rights to apply for other Medicaid categories before they were terminated for loss of their SSI check. 

These folks got on Daniels because they had no income or were very low income and they had a serious chronic medical condition, such as HIV/AIDS, serious mental health condition, hemophilia, premature birth, etc. In addition, many of these may have developed other serious medical conditions. Despite the seriousness of their medical conditions, most will not be eligible for another TennCare Medicaid category because of how restrictive eligibility is today for TennCare.  

Therefore most will go without care unless a special needs safety-net is established before the cuts occur. This could result in more than 100,000 low-income folks losing their health care coverage.

To read an article about the proposed cuts in the Chattanooga Free Times Press