People in the news

Phil Bredesen

Former Tennessee Governor (2003-2011)

(courtesy: State of Tennessee)

More on: Phil Bredesen

At a Glance
Path to Power
The Issues
The Network
Campaign Contributions
Additional Resources

Background

At a Glance

Career History: Mayor of Nashvile, Tenn.
Birthday: November 21, 1943
Hometown: Shortsville, N.Y.
Alma Mater: Harvard University, B.A. (physics), 1967
Spouse: Andrea Conte

Religion: Presbyterian
Office: Governor's Office, Tennessee State Capitol, Nashville, TN 37243-0001, (615) 741-2001
Email
Web Site

Path to Power

Bredesen was born in Oceanport, N.J., and grew up in rural Shortsville, N.Y., in a working-class home. He attended Harvard University on an academic scholarship, graduating with a degree in physics.

After graduating, he ran for state senator in Massachusetts, but lost.

Read more

In 1973, Bredesen and his wife, Andrea Conte, moved to Nashville, Tenn., so she could take a job with the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), a private hospital management company.

HealthAmerica Corp.

Bredesen also has a health care background, but one that makes some health activists a little nervous. In 1980, he founded HealthAmerica Corp., which acquired and ran health-management organizations (HMOs), the cost-conscious and sometimes controversial providers of managed care.

The Nashville-based company grew to more than 6,000 employees and was publicly-traded on the New York Stock Exchange before it was sold to MaxiCare Health in 1986. Bredesen reportedly made a $47 million profit on the sale.

Bredesen later joined HealthAmerica's former chief financial officer to form Coventry Corporation, which after a merger became Coventry Health Care, which was a Fortune 500 managed care provider until 2007 (Bredesen was no longer involved).

Having amassed a fortune of between $100 million and $250 million, mainly in the managed care business, according to the Associated Press, Bredesen left the company for politics. He made his first run for mayor of Nashville in 1987, but lost in a runoff. He also ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Tennessee's 5th district in 1988.

Mayor of Nashville

Bredesen was mayor of Nashville from 1991 to 1999, and during the economic boom of the 1990s he became known for his push to recruit the NFL's Tennessee Titans and NHL's Nashville Predators.

Bredesen ran an unsuccessful campaign for Tennessee governor in 1994.

Governor of Tennessee

Bredesen took office as governor in January 2003 after beating a popular Republican. His first term was plagued by a funding crisis in education and at TennCare, Tennessee's expanded Medicare program. Bredesen was criticized for cutting about 170,000 adults from the program and reducing benefits for thousands more, but the same critics admit he didn't have many options. He called the process "painful," but said that cutting TennCare costs ultimately helped the state survive an economic downturn.

"He said what he was going to do, and then he did it," Instapundit's Glenn Harlan Reynolds wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2005. "His first fiscal year ended with the state in surplus, and the 'rainy day fund' is at its highest level in history."

In 2006, Bredesen created a market-based health-care plan for low-income adults called "Cover Tennessee."

The same year, he ran for re-election largely on his record of curtailing the state's finances and expanding a public pre-kindergarten program. He won in a landslide victory, the first governor to win all 95 counties in Tennessee in 16 years.

Bredesen was also helped to victory when he lured Nissan Motor Corp. to move their North American headquarters from California to a Nashville suburb. During his second term, he convinced Volkswagen to open a plant in Chattanooga.

In 2005, The Wall Street Journal reported, "He's probably the most popular governor in Tennessee history." His name came up in discussions of possible 2008 Democratic presidential candidates.

Bredesen is limited to two terms as governor; his second term is up in 2011.

In February 2009, news outlets reported that Bredesen was "in serious discussions" with the administration for Health and Human Services secretary after Obama's pick, former Sen. Daschle withdrew his nomination over tax issues.

The Issues

While Bredesen has experience with health care in both the private and public sector, it's the kind of background that makes progressive reformers squirm. By choice or by circumstance, he's a cost-cutter.

Before entering politics, Bredesen founded and ran HealthCare America, which took struggling HMOs and made them profitable, largely by keeping a tight lid on costs. While appealing to businesses looking to lower health-care costs, HMOs were criticized for handcuffing doctors and making health care a bureaucratic process. HealthAmerica became one of the largest HMOs of the managed-care revolution.

Read more

Bredesen's first term as governor of Tennessee was largely marked by a crisis in funding for TennCare, which provided health care to low-income Tennesseans. Bredesen, who took office in 2003, cut about 170,000 adults from the program and reduced benefits for thousands more. Progressive health blogger Ezra Klein called it "gutting TennCare." (Though Klein noted that Bredesen didn't have many other options in the financial climate at the time.)

Bredesen's Web site notes that the governor preserved coverage for children and the elderly. In 2006, he created a program called "Cover Tennessee," which offers insurance to Tennesseans who might otherwise have trouble getting it such as people who own their own businesses or the severely ill.

Shortly after Obama's election, Bredesen wrote an op-ed promoting Cover Tennessee in the Wall Street Journal, pointing out the success of the program's free check-ups and mammograms as well as its generics-only prescription drug program.

"Having been badly burned by uncontrolled growth in costs in Tennessee's Medicaid program (TennCare once gobbled up a third of the state's budget), we proceeded cautiously with CoverTN and have been rewarded with good control of costs," he wrote. "What we're finding is that even in health care, when people know that there are limits, they work to manage their costs."

To that end, Bredesen has proposed that everyone should "pay a little something for everything" in order to reduce costs overall. "It is simple economics that if you want someone to make efficient choices, they have to have a little skin in the game, some personal responsibility."

The governor's other key cost-control ideas: pay for important procedures before elective ones and "pay for what works," such as opting for generic drugs over brand-name pharmaceuticals.

Health Industry Ties

Bredesen's private sector work bound him closely to the health insurance industry. Those ties could make the governor vulnerable to ethics rules established by the Obama administration to separate government officials from the industries in which they worked.

However, Bredesen has at times spoken out against the pharmaceutical industry, saying, "It defies common sense that we would agree to buy whatever some company puts on the market, whether or not it offers better results, whether or not there are less expensive or more cost-effective alternatives." His Cover Tennessee program relies on generic drugs, a sticking point for many in the pharmaceutical industry.

Accountability and Open Government

Bredesen's focus on making state government both more transparent and more accountable to voters is similar to the aims of the Obama administration.

The Tennessee Democrat established what his Web site calls "the toughest ethics rules in the history of Tennessee's executive branch."

Bredesen also ended closed-door budget hearings, "allowing taxpayers to see for the first time the decisions that are made on how their money is spent," according to his Web site.

2008 Vice Presidential Hopes

In the 2008 presidential election, Bredesen refrained from endorsing either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama during their epic fight for the Democratic nomination, leading many in Tennessee to wonder if the governor was hoping to be added to either ticket as vice president.

Before Obama emerged as the winner, Bredesen made the rounds on TV talk shows, offering himself as a sort of arbiter of the Democratic nomination battle and proposing a convention of superdelegates to be held prior to the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

The Network

In February 2009, Bredesen's name was reportedly being vetted as a possible nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services in Barack Obama's cabinet.

Campaign Contributions

Bredesen has a long history of donating bits of his vast personal wealth to Democratic causes, including repeated, large donation to the Tennessee Democratic Party, former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr., President Bill Clinton and Tennessee Sen. Al Gore.

Additional Resources