more tenncare

18 Nov 2004

Last one for a while on tenncare, I swear.

As an example of the idiotic blame being thrown at Bonnyman, I’m copying this comment I made over at Bill Hobbs’ post on Tenncare:

The Tennessee Justice Center is nothing more than a left-wing law firm with a two-fold agenda: rake in millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money by suing the state

Bill is being silly. TCJ, by his own figures from a previous post has been paid 3.56 million since 1996, over 8 years.

Let’s do some math.

3.56 million divided by 8 years = 445,000.0/year.

Judging from their staff website, they have 11 employees.

The Nashville City Paper article he links to says:

Johnson, as managing attorney makes roughly $48,500 per year, she said. Bonnyman as executive director receives $68,000.

So that leaves 328500.0 a year for 9 other employees, leaving around $36k/year per employee.

Wow, what a bunch of fat cats! I bet they can afford to buy brand-name ramen instead of Kroger generic!

Naturally these legal fees are probably not their only source of revenue, but his claim that they are “raking in million dollars” rings a little hollow given these numbers. Tenncare is, what, a $2.3 billion/year program? I hardly think the $445k/year in legal fees is what’s breaking their bank, sorry.