Blanco unveils health care plan - includes vouchers for private insurance

[MonteSano]

A wide-ranging plan to improve the availability and quality of health care services in the New Orleans area and reduce the region's longtime reliance on the Charity Hospital System was presented to Gov. Kathleen Blanco Thursday, a day before a federally mandated deadline.

The 67-page concept paper by the Louisiana Health Care Redesign Collaborative describes "medical home" networks of clinics and specialists and seeks to redirect money now spent on indigent care at hospitals to vouchers that low-income people can use to buy private insurance.

The paper will serve as the basis for detailed negotiations between state officials and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which must approve any major changes to the rules that govern federal health care programs.

For Blanco, who made health care reform a cornerstone of her 2003 campaign but who has little to show after nearly three years in office, the culmination of a sometimes-contentious three-month planning process offered a rare opportunity to crow.

"In Louisiana, health care reform was declared dead by many naysayers, but like the phoenix it has risen from the ashes," Blanco told members of the redesign panel, a 40-member group of lobbyists and other interest groups authorized by the Legislature last spring to come up with the overhaul plan.


http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-6/1161324528179470.xml&coll=1

[jus_the_facts]

1. "the region's longtime reliance on the Charity Hospital System....."

...YOU Ms. Blanco...you're not capable of doing anything but destroy what little health care the poor receive from those charity hospitals by revisions with LOBBYISTS and PRIVATE insurance providers...our majority DEM legislature has already passed and SHE signed into law that when/if Roe vs. Wade were to be overturned...Louisiana won't allow any more abortions...I have NO confidence in her what-so-ever. x(


Last chance to do it right?


http://www.houmatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060424/BUSINESS03/60424001/1110/business03

snip*

If a system were the only one of its kind in the United States, was very antiquated, and yielded poor results, one would think those in charge of the operation would be desperately trying to reform it. Not so with Louisiana's Charity Hospital system. The genesis of the Charity system was during Huey Long's tenure as governor. In subsequent years, it grew to become the main delivery system for indigent health care across Louisiana. At its inception 70 years ago, it was a progressive approach. But in today's world of federally controlled Medicaid, it's a dinosaur being kept alive by politicians for political purposes.


In the final analysis, whether or not Louisiana's "unique" and quality-challenged indigent health care system is reformed will come down squarely in the lap of Governor Blanco and the Legislature. Will the governor's hand-picked Louisiana Recovery Authority urge her to support the crux of the Price Waterhouse Coopers recommendations? If so, will she strongly embrace them and use her political capital to make them a reality? And, given all of that, does she have enough political capital to push through the reforms, if she is so inclined? How those questions are answered will write the next chapter of indigent health care reform in Louisiana.

[Acadia Blue]

2. It was that PIG JINDAL who closed down most of the Chairty hospitals

when he worked for Foster. It was something he was sooooo proud about, and it caused the poor to have to drive long distances to go to available Chairty hospitals. If that super greed pig becomes governor, he will gleefully let the poor eat cake and die at his feet.

I need more information about the Price Waterhouse Coopers recommendations. I did not know about this. Is it just not possible to reform the system? It is the main training source for many doctors and until Katrina had the best trama ER in the entire state.