TennCare expands pregnancy coverage, to provide diapers

JACKSON, Tenn. — The State of Tennessee is making advancements to help families financially.

Some changes to the state’s Medicaid program, TennCare, could save Tennesseans a lot of money.

TennCare will soon be including diapers in their program to assist families.

As part of the proposed budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year, Gov. Bill Lee proposed a number of improvements for the TennCare program.

Stephen Smith, the Director for TennCare, said that the improvements will focus on children, pregnant women and parents.

“Specifically, we are going to be covering more parents, we are going to be covering more pregnant women, we are going to make sure that all the children on the program will have at least 12 months of continuous coverage. We will be providing lactation support for new mothers,” Smith said.

Tennessee will be the first state in the country to be implementing changes like these. Smith said the purpose is to ease the financial burden on families in the state.

“We know about one in three families nationally struggle with providing enough diapers for their children because of the high cost, and that can lead to health issues such as diaper rash and UTI. So there’s a real health benefit with this as well as a financial benefit to families,” Smith said.

Smith said TennCare was able to provide this benefit by utilizing a unique waiver negotiated with the federal government called TennCare 3.

The concept of the waiver is that the state is rewarded by the federal government for its efficient management of its TennCare program.

The reward comes in the form of additional federal dollars the state can use to enhance the benefits and serve more people.

“The real benefit of this is that not only can we provide more benefits and serve more people, more Tennesseans, but we can do it at no additional taxpayer expense,” Smith said.

These changes will be implemented with the fiscal year 2023-24 budget.

You can read more about the TennCare expansion here.

You can find more news from across the state here.