Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen visited a Nashville-based small business Monday to sign into law a piece of legislation that extends health insurance to small businesses and uninsured working Tennesseans. The Cover Tennessee Act includes initiatives that extend health coverage to uninsured children, chronically ill adults and creates a low-cost insurance program for uninsured working Tennesseans.

Joining Gov. Bredesen at PlumGood Food, which has 23 employees, was a bipartisan group of state lawmakers, state officials and employees, representatives from the National Federation of Independent Business, small businesses owners, uninsured families and health care providers from across the state.

“Cover Tennessee is a fundamentally different approach to providing affordable and portable health insurance coverage to hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans who have no insurance today,” said Gov. Bredesen. “We are taking a decidedly unique approach to bring health insurance back within the reach of working Tennesseans by relying on voluntary partnerships between the state, employers and the individual. This bold new path enjoys bipartisan support from the Tennessee General Assembly, the NFIB and other business groups and the state’s health care industry.”

Signed into law today were several programs that extend health insurance to uninsured Tennesseans:

Cover Kids – Creates a partnership between the state and the federal government to extend comprehensive health coverage to uninsured children and pregnant women.

AccessTN - Provides a health insurance plan for seriously ill adults who have previously not been able to obtain private insurance coverage. This is guaranteed issue, comprehensive health coverage for uninsurable adults, and includes premium assistance for low-income participants.

CoverTN - Creates a partnership between the state and private employers to offer guaranteed, affordable, portable, basic health coverage for working uninsured Tennesseans. Includes an option for small businesses to offer CoverTN to all employees.

The legislation also creates Project Diabetes, which expands an educational pilot project to K-8 schools across the state to teach healthy lifestyles and eating habits and launches a grant program to expand treatment options focusing on reducing Type II diabetes and obesity.

During the bill signing ceremony, the Governor highlighted the differences between Cover Tennessee and other efforts to extend health insurance.

“With Cover Tennessee, the state is in control of the program’s design, implementation and costs. And unlike other states, Cover Tennessee is voluntary,” said Gov. Bredesen. “Our role as government is to ensure that anyone who wants health insurance has a shot at getting it, and that is what Cover Tennessee provides. But this is just beginning of the challenge. The success or failure of our efforts will depend on our ability to implement Cover Tennessee and attract the small businesses and uninsured individuals we want to help.”

The low-cost CoverTN insurance product is the centerpiece of Governor Bredesen’s Cover Tennessee plan. CoverTN will provide targeted health benefits to working uninsured adults for about $150 per month. Premiums will vary based on age, smoking status and weight. The premiums can be shared between the state and an individual or between the state, an individual and that person’s employer.

Gov. Bredesen also announced Monday that safety net services providing transitional assistance for TennCare disenrollees will be extended through the end of 2006. This marks the second extension of several programs previously scheduled to expire on June 30.