Tennessee Stands Holding Rally to Support Religious Exemptions for Vaccines

Nonprofit social advocacy organization Tennessee Stands will rally in support of an amendment for vaccine religious exemptions on Wednesday. The Senate Health and Welfare Committee will be reviewing the bill carrying the amendment that day, which seeks to prohibit government-mandated COVID-19 vaccines. 

In an interview with The Tennessee Star, Tennessee Stands founder Gary Humble explained that this rally would allow Tennessee lawmakers to see the support this bill has among their constituents. 

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Bill Allowing Religious Exemptions to Vaccines Regardless of a Public Health Emergency Lives on as Potential Amendment in a Senate Bill

Through amendment, another legislator is seeking to revive a bill affording religious or conscientious exemptions for vaccines during a public health emergency. As The Tennessee Star reported, the original bill seeking to provide those protections was killed by the House Health Subcommittee earlier this month.

The bill carrying this amendment originally only sought to prohibit state or local governments from mandating COVID-19 vaccinations. State Senator Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma) announced the amendment during the Senate Health and Welfare Committee hearing on Wednesday.

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TennCare Recipients Might Soon Reportedly Have to Start Working

If you are on TennCare then you may have to put on your boots, roll up your sleeves and get to work if you still want your benefits, according to the Memphis-based WMC Action News 5. “The state of Tennessee is asking the Trump administration to enact those requirements. They said it would apply to roughly 56,000 Tenncare recipients,” the station reported. “However, there is concern about some details of the plan. In an application to Medicaid in late December, state officials said Tenncare work requirements would not impact pregnant women, the elderly, disabled, or those with certain medical conditions.” Tenncare’s plan, WMC went on to say, asks that recipients put in 20 hours a week of community service, education, or work for four out of six months. Tennessee has 1.3 million people on Tenncare. The work program would affect only 56,000 of those recipients, the station said, without specifying further. The idea for this comes from the neighboring state of Arkansas, WMC reported. “Arkansas is the first state in the nation to implement a Medicaid work requirement and kicked more than 17 thousand people off Medicaid in 2018 for failing to report their work activities,” according to the station.…

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