Louisiana cuts Medicaid program to the bone [View all]

[cali]

Published: Friday, July 13, 2012, 11:00 PM Updated: Saturday, July 14, 2012, 12:36 PM
The Times-Picayune By The Times-Picayune


Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration announced widespread cuts to the Louisiana Medicaid program Friday, with the hospitals and clinics run by Louisiana State University taking the most severe blows. The LSU cuts total $329 million for the fiscal year, about a quarter of the health system's annual budget and an eyebrow-raising sum that raises the specter of reorganization, if not virtual elimination of the safety-net model as it has existed for decades.
bruce-greenstein_1024.jpgView full sizeGerald Herbert, The Associated Press archiveLouisiana Health Secretary Bruce Greenstein maintained Friday that the cuts will not affect Medicaid patients' access to or quality of care.

An additional $202 million in reductions will be spread over other Medicaid vendors, including virtually every other Louisiana hospital, public and private, along with a range of other health care providers.

The total $551 million reduction comes out of an approximately $7 billion insurance program that provides health care access to 1.2 million Louisianians, most of them children. Rural nonstate hospitals will lose all of their state payments for treating the insured and the uninsured. Private and other nonstate hospitals will have their Medicaid payment rates reduced by 3.7 percent.

The reductions involve $193 million in state general fund appropriations, which in turn cost the state federal matching money that accounts for the rest of the total. Health Secretary Bruce Greenstein said more reductions could come later in the budget year.

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