NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - State Attorney General Herbert Slatery has found that the cost of lawmakers' taxpayer-subsidized health insurance coverage falls under Tennessee's open records laws.
Slatery says in a legal opinion released Monday that the amounts spent by the state are not confidential because they do not disclose any information about the treatment, diagnoses or medications for any individually identifiable lawmaker.
The issue of lawmaker health benefits became a subject of attention as the General Assembly rejected Republican Gov. Bill Haslam's proposal to extend coverage to 280,000 low-income Tennesseans.
Eighty-eight of 99 House members and 28 of the 33 senators are on the state employee health plan -- including six of seven senators who voted to kill Haslam's Insure Tennessee plan during a special legislative session in February.
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