Posted in Congress, Notable Quotables, Politics on December 29, 2012| 1 Comment »
“It is extremely satisfying to see a politician being made the rube by just the kind of sensationalism (in this case satiric) that they seem to adept at manufacturing these days.”
—Blogger Hudson Hongo, who latched onto Congressman John Fleming’s Facebook post, remarking on the Louisiana lawmaker’s falling for a satire story on The Onion about the opening of an $8 billion abortionplex.
Posted in Politics on December 11, 2012| 6 Comments »
Gov. Piyush Jindal has apparently produced more smoke and mirrors in the unveiling of the administration’s plans to lease four LSU Health System hospitals in South Louisiana to private medical facilities.
Bruce Greenstein, Jindal’s Secretary of Health and Hospitals, and LSU Executive Vice President Frank Opelka made major productions of the announcement on Monday that Louisiana Children’s Medical Center (LCMC) would take over operations of the LSU Interim Hospital in New Orleans and eventually the as-yet unfinished $1.1 billion new academic medical center.
At the same time, it was announced that Lafayette General Health System would assume operations of University Medical Center in Lafayette and that Ochsner Health System and Terrebonne General Medical Center would partner to run Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center in Houma.
Jindal and DHH officials are calling the deals “partnerships,” but a closer look into the arrangements reveals that the administration may well simply be shuffling Medicaid dollars in a circuitous route in an effort to secure more federal Medicaid matching dollars, a practice that could be frowned upon by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
Another problem may arise when the University Medical Center Medical Corp. Board is supplanted by the LCMC which will run the academic medical center as the “sole member” of the University Medical Center’s management board.
That’s because when private property was expropriated for the construction of the academic medical center, it was for a “public purpose,” the operation of a state-run hospital to serve as a safety net for New Orleans’s indigent population. Because the facility will no longer be a state-run hospital under the auspices of LSU, the legality of the expropriations could be called into question.
Opelka, however, said the plan is for LCMC, which already operates Touro Infirmary, to be the parent corporation over Touro, LCMC and the UMC boards.
Monday’s memorandums of understanding (MOU) announced by the administration commit the private hospitals to continue care of the poor and uninsured and to train the state’s future physicians.
As recently as September, the LSU Board of Supervisors approved a plan to lay off 600 personnel at the Interim LSU Public Hospital in New Orleans.
Now, suddenly, the MOUs are announced that miraculously, will make all the planned layoffs unnecessary.
It’s enough to make one wonder what transpired in the three months between September and the first week in December—especially since no official explanation has been given for the sudden reversal. It seems unlikely that such a complex agreement involving the transfer of upwards of $2 billion—or more—in buildings and equipment could be worked out in such a short time.
Negotiations, in fact, will continue in secret on financial arrangements that will be instrumental in any final agreement for the private entities to take over operations of the state hospitals.
The agreements, in addition to requiring nearly $30 million in payments from the private hospitals, call for the state to make higher Medicaid payments to those same facilities.
Hospitals are paid the same rate for Medicaid patients but there are avenues by which additional payments may be made for higher volumes of Medicaid patients. These are Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) allotments and the state’s relative new Low-Income and Needy Care Collaboration Agreement (LINCCA).
Additionally, a supplemental Upper Payment Limit (UPL) program for physicians was developed by the state to pay physicians the difference between the average commercial rate and the Medicaid rate.
Under terms of the agreement, the three private hospitals will pay the state almost $30 million in advance financial committees, according to documents provided by Opelka and DHH. Those documents provided little additional information about how the lease agreements will be structured.
So, why would these private medical facilities agree to pay the state to take over state hospitals that are losing money?
The answer to that could lie in those DSH and LINCCA payments made by the state to the hospitals.
If that is the case, the hospitals would be using Medicaid money received from the state to pay back to the state the so-called Milestone lease payments and the state, in turn, would use the lease payments—that same Medicaid money—to leverage more federal Medicaid money with which Jindal would plug a $300 million hole in the state’s Medicaid budget.
Smoke and mirrors.
Posted in Politics on December 7, 2012| 4 Comments »
By now, only a recluse living on a houseboat somewhere in the murky bayous of Louisiana is unaware that Piyush Jindal deflects all questions about his presidential aspirations with the stock line, “I have the job I want.”
Yeah, right. That’s why the Boy Blunder spends more time on the road than Hope and Crosby (if you don’t get that, don’t worry about it; you’d have no reason to know the reference unless you’re into really old ‘40s and ‘50s movies).
So, let’s try this one: He’s been absent so much that his photo has appeared on milk cartons throughout Louisiana.
Positioning himself for a presidential run in 2016? Ridiculous!
That’s why he was named chairman of the National Republican Governors’ Association for 2013.
And that’s why he started taking potshots at Mitt Romney literally hours after Romney lost the presidential election to President Obama.
And that, apparently, is why he wrote that sophomoric essay on the so-called fiscal cliff facing Congress for Politico that contains all the intellectual depth of that essay he wrote about his conducting an exorcism on “Susan,” a fellow student at Brown University.
That little article brought appropriate ridicule from New York Times columnist Jonathan Chait who pointed out, correctly, that Jindal has little to no grasp of fiscal realities.
Chait could have been really cruel had he simply pointed out that Piyush has failed to have a balanced budget a single year since becoming governor. And he could have slam-dunked Piyush had he told his readers of Jindal’s patchwork on the state budget with one-time money.
Instead, Chait was satisfied with just smirking a little as he referred to Piyush as a sitting governor “with presidential ambitions.
National aspirations? That’s just crazy talk. Why on earth would he choose to ignore the Louisiana media’s repeated requests for interviews while courting Politico, the Washington Post, CNN and Fox News if he planned on moving up the political food chain?
Presidential ambitions? Why would anyone think such a thing?
Well, if you happen to be LSU mass communications professor Bob Mann, who also has a political blog called Something Like the Truth, you might cruise the internet highway in search of domain names.
That’s what Mann did and the results came quickly. He typed in key words like “Bobby Jindal,” “president,” and “2016.”
Bingo!
Up popped http://www.jindal2016.com/, and when he keyed it in, his search automatically redirected him to Gov. Piyush’s campaign website, http://www.bobbyjindal.com/.
“That really jumped out at me,” Mann said. “To me, it says they want people who think Jindal is running for president to find bobbyjindal.com. Mann, a leading political expert (his curriculum vitae includes work for Sens. Russell Long, John Breaux and Bennett Johnston and former Gov. Kathleen Blanco), said he considers his discovery just another indication that Piyush will run in 2016. “There’s no doubt whatsoever about it; he wants to be president.”
Jindal’s office, to no one’s surprise, did not respond to a request for comment (one has to wonder why he retains a press secretary) on the website. A spokesperson for Jindal’s campaign office, however, disavows ownership of the site and is unsure of the reason it redirects to the governor’s website.
Posted in Politics on November 21, 2012| 8 Comments »
Posted in Politics on October 30, 2012| 3 Comments »
Our online e-newspaper Louisiana Free Press is up and running. We will be featuring the more day to day coverage of state government. Drop by and leave a comment: http://louisianafreepress.com/
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