Political notebook: ACLU to challenge drug testing for welfare recipients in Tenn.

July 06--NASHVILLE -- The American Civil Liberties Union is planning a lawsuit to challenge a new Tennessee law mandating drug testing in some circumstances for people seeking welfare benefits.

Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, was sponsor of the law in question, approved by the Legislature in 2012 but not becoming fully effective until July 1 of this year.

Under the law, applicants for the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program can face drug screening tests based on their response to questions during the application process. If the test is positive for drugs, the person can be cut off from benefits if a follow-up test six months later also is positive.

Courts have struck down laws in other states -- notably Florida -- that made drug tests mandatory for all welfare recipients. In legislative hearings, Campfield said his bill was revised to limit coverage and withstand court challenges.

But the Tennessee ACLU said in a news release that the law still "raises serious constitutional concerns."

"This law singles out limited-income people and requires them to submit to humiliating and intrusive searches of their bodily fluids because they need temporary help making ends meet," said Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU in Tennessee. "Research indicates that TANF recipients are no more likely to use illicit drugs than farmers, veterans, and students, who also receive government support."

Word play: U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander's campaign didn't give the full picture in claiming "Lamar was proven right" in a TV ad saying insurance premiums have risen more than 50 percent under Obamacare, according to The Commercial Appeal.

The ad, which began running Sunday, depicts a brief 2010 exchange between President Obama and Alexander over whether premiums would increase and flashes a caption reading "Individual premiums up 50%+ -- 2010 to 2013 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Kaiser Family Foundation." The narrator declares "Lamar was proven right," while a "Fox News 2/25/10" source line appears at the bottom of the screen.

Actually, differing measures are available and in Tennessee at least one type of insurance offered under the Affordable Care Act has seen a drop in premiums while other types increased less than 50 percent, according to the newspaper's review.

The caption's claim that individual premiums are up more than 50 percent between 2010 and 2013 is, according to campaign spokesmen, a comparison of the national average monthly premium for an individual health insurance in 2010 to Health & Human Services data released in September 2013, just as the ACA's new health insurance exchanges began operating.

From the newspaper's report:

"But the 2013 HHS report cited by the campaign provides average monthly premiums, nationally and state-by-state, for three different categories of individual insurance plans that consumers could buy on the new exchanges and the Alexander campaign used the most expensive of the three to come up with its "50 percent plus" figure. Only one of the three increased by more than 50 percent during that three-year span -- one of the two "silver plans" the HHS report cited.

"Using the national average 2010 individual health insurance premium of $215 as a baseline, an individual would have paid 53 percent more in 2013 for that plan, or $328 a month, the one comparison the Alexander campaign used. The lowest cost silver plan, $310 a month, was 44 percent more. The lowest cost "bronze" plan, $249 a month, cost 16 percent more.

"The ad did not mention that Tennesseans could have bought the bronze plan for 11 percent less in late 2013, $181 a month as compared to the $204 that the average individual health plan cost in Tennessee in 2010 according to the Kaiser report that the campaign used. The lowest cost silver plan in Tennessee in late 2013 cost $235, or 15 percent more than the Tennessee average in 2010, and the second-lowest-cost silver plan cost $245 in Tennessee, up 20 percent."

Ball spokesman: Trace Sharp, who worked in Democrat Mike McWherter's 2010 gubernatorial campaign, has he has taken a leave of absence as executive director of the Crockett Policy Institute to become spokeswoman for Gordon Ball'sU.S. Senate campaign.

Sharp, also previously known for her blogging, said that the CPI board of directors granted a leave of absence for the duration of the Ball campaign at her request. CPI is not endorsing anyone in the campaigns, she said. The organization's daily roundup of Tennessee political news, which had been edited by Sharp, will be handled by others in her absence.

CPI bills itself as "a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, dedicated to improving the lives of Tennesseans by promoting practical, workable and fair solutions to the challenges facing Tennessee and the surrounding region."

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