Louisiana cuts Medicaid program to the bone
Times-Picayune (excerpt)

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. An additional $531 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 $860 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.