EDITORIAL: Protect, Fund Louisiana Health First
The Daily Advertiser (excerpt)

The financial crunch looms over DHH at a time when the agency is engaged in a mission important to the future of health care for the poor in Louisiana. Louisiana Health First is designed to address problems with the delivery system and to confront several major, long-standing financial issues. The proposal to move toward a coordinated system of care has received the support of organizations such as Blueprint Louisiana, the Council for a Better Louisiana, Louisiana Academy of Family Physicians, Louisiana Primary Care Association (a broad coalition of health centers for the poor) and Tulane University.

It is important that no financial barriers be raised to a program that has gained favor with so many knowledgeable organizations. The support indicates DHH has made important strides toward dealing with a health- care system that has been ranked among the worst in the nation.

DHH and the Jindal administration face two huge challenges. First, it is profoundly important that Louisiana Health First be adequately funded. A more perplexing problem is freeing health care and education from crippling budget cuts during hard times, simply because they are not constitutionally protected. The latter is a long-term challenge.

Levine is taking an approach to immediate challenges that could hold damage to a minimum. Chief among them are mitigating cuts in the reimbursement of physicians, hospitals, pharmacists and other health-care providers, and protecting pediatricians and family-practice physicians from cuts so the state doesn't lose more of them as Medicaid providers.