CHICKENS COMING HOME TO ROOST?

The Jindal administration on Thursday announced it has canceled a controversial contract that has come under scrutiny by a federal grand jury.

Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols issued a prepared statement announcing the decision affecting a $185 million-plus contract to process Medicaid claims with CNSI, a firm with ties to state health Secretary Bruce Greenstein.
....

Greenstein’s office directed media inquiries to Nichols’ office.
Gov. Bobby Jindal declined a request to be interviewed on Greenstein’s job status. Jindal’s office released a prepared statement from Paul Rainwater, the governor’s chief of staff, that said: “We have confidence in Bruce.”

The development occurred just hours after news broke that a federal grand jury was investigating the administration’s award of the contract.

Still the administration is not yet ready to say goodbye to Bruce. 

The company got the contract for Medicaid claims processing in 2011 amid some complaints that the firm “low balled” the price and made erroneous assumptions in its proposal.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

The CNSI contract has been amended once since it was signed, increasing its $185 million cost by about $9 million. A second contract amendment proposed by DHH that would have added another $40 million was sidelined recently by the state Division of Administration.

Oops!

The Jindal administration functioned for years with virtually no checks and balances.  Jindal and his closed circle of advisers operated in secrecy; the legislature went along with Jindal's proposals with little scrutiny; and Jindal brooked no dissent from the administrators of the various agencies.  Dissent publicly, and you're out.

The local press is given little access to the governor and his inner circle, but Jindal rarely refuses a request by national media for interviews and appearances.  Since the local press know more about what's happening in the state, they might ask hard questions, but the national media view Jindal as the new face of the Republican Party, possibly even presidential material, and the governor is eager to encourage the impression.

DASTARDLY DEEDS

The Jindal administration is preparing to roll out about $860 million in cuts to the government’s insurance program that delivers health care to Louisiana’s poor — the result of newly authorized federal Medicaid funding reductions critics call disastrous.

Major health care providers said Friday they are preparing for something they know cannot be good for them or the poor, elderly and disabled once the funds are stripped from the $7.7 billion Medicaid program.

One association that provides community services to the developmentally disabled is already calling for a special legislative session to generate revenues to offset more cuts in the fiscal year that began Sunday.

Another association executive wondered whether the state could still have a viable program that meets federal Medicaid “access to care” requirements.

Jindal will have his balanced budget on the backs of the poor, the ill, the disabled, the suffering, because we can never, ever raise taxes on the rich.  In fact, we can never raise taxes on anyone.
  
But wait!  Jindal has a plan, which has not yet been announced.  What will it be?  Stretchers in the streets to save hospital costs?  Will the administration close down the primary care clinics, so that the poor will have to wait until they are so sick that they go to the emergency room, and the state and the rest of us will pay for care that's far more costly than primary care in a clinic?

“There’s not a lot of good choices,” said state Senate Health and Welfare chairman David Heitmeier, D-New Orleans, who said discussions can begin once the plan is laid out.

“It’s going to be devastating. There’s no way to sugar- coat it,” said Louisiana House Health and Welfare Committee Chairman Scott Simon, R-Abita Springs.
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Louisiana State Medical Society Executive Vice President Jeff Williams said whatever the administration comes up with is going to have to be system-wide and a systemic change.

Williams said a provision in the federal law that requires reimbursement rates to physicians and other providers to be sufficient enough to ensure Medicaid patients have the same access to health care as a private-pay patient.

Whatever the proposed plan, it will not solve the looming catastrophe that will result from the severe budget cuts in state Medicaid services.  Perhaps Jindal counts on supernatural help to solve the state's budget problems, as he did in his university days when he performed an exorcism on his friend.

Note: You have to pay to read the entire article on the exorcism, but you get the idea from the first page.

THINGS THAT DEPRESS ME

As many as 500,000 Louisiana residents — mainly working adults — won’t get government health insurance as a result of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s decision to reject a Medicaid expansion in the law overhauling the federal health care system.

Jindal has said on national television that the new health care law recently found constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court is too costly and allows government to intrude too much into private lives.
Executives of the LSU-run and community hospitals voiced concern that Louisiana could suffer a “double whammy” because the new law decreases money to pay for the care of the uninsured, while increasing funding for Medicaid coverage for many of those same people. Jindal opposes state expansion of Medicaid.

Insurance executives also say they’re worried about Jindal’s opposition to setting up a state-run clearinghouse that allows consumers to shop and compare policies, according to Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon.
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DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein, who is Jindal’s chief public health lieutenant, declined comment again Monday.

He has refused a dozen requests for an interview about the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, since June 28.

If Louisiana expanded Medicaid, the federal government would pay 100 percent of costs for the first three years, then 95 percent for the following three years and 90 percent after that, under the provisions of the ACA. (My emphasis throughout)

So tell me how Jindal's decision not to participate in expanding Medicaid makes any %#@&*$ sense at all.  Why is the secretary of the DHH in hiding and refusing to comment?  Greenstein will have to say something sometime.  What will he say? 

The man who has the title of governor is running around the country, making a fool of himself trying to get Mitt Romney elected, and, in the meantime, leaving the Gret Stet of Loosiana in the hands of surrogates to run...the Gret Stet, which is at the bottom of the surveys in all the positives and at the top in all the negatives, and who, when he does take action, runs the state further to the ground.  By the time Jindal finishes his term, the state will be underground.