After lagging behind the rest of the country for years, Tennessee is catching up fast when it comes to improvements in its health care system aimed at elderly and disabled residents. More of them are getting the assistance they need in their homes — at a much lower cost than at a nursing home. A lot of this change is the direct result of efforts by Governor Phil Bredesen.
Nearing the end of his eight years in office (he is required to leave due to term limits this year), Bredesen decided to focus on getting Tennessee off the bottom rung in rankings of states that offer consumers choices in long-term care. Just a few years earlier, only a few hundred Tennesseans were able to get Medicaid funding for anything but a nursing home. Now, it is one of a handful of bellwether states that offer a broad range of alternatives to nursing home care.
Wal-Mart joins a growing list of corporations supporting sustainable agriculture programs and small farmers, saying it is planning to double the sales of local produce in its U.S. stores by the end of 2015.
