BATON ROUGE (AP) — Health and Hospitals Secretary Bruce Greenstein said he expects to announce by Friday how he’ll divvy up $859
million in cuts across Louisiana’s Medicaid program for the poor, elderly and disabled.
“To us, the clock is ticking. We have 355 days left in this fiscal year. The quicker we move to implementation, the greater
the number of days we have to spread the cuts across the year,” Greenstein said Tuesday.
The cut is tied to a congressional reduction in Louisiana’s federal Medicaid financing rate.
Greenstein didn’t offer details about what will be slashed, saying he’s seeking efficiencies in the department and Medicaid
program to try to lessen the impact on services and providers.
But hospitals, doctors and other health providers said while they haven’t gotten any hints from the health department, they
are bracing for deep cuts that shrink the money they receive for taking care of Medicaid patients and the uninsured, cuts
they say could damage services.
The cuts are an 11 percent reduction from Louisiana’s $7.7 billion Medicaid budget that had been planned for the budget year
that began July 1.
When the congressional reduction was
still being negotiated, Greenstein outlined cuts that would sharply
reduce funding to
the LSU-run public hospitals and rural hospitals, would eliminate
programs that provide hospice care and breast and cervical
cancer treatment and would slice the rates paid to nursing homes,
doctors and others who take care of Medicaid patients.
Greenstein said that outline was used as “the base to start our thinking.”
Fred Cerise, LSU’s vice president for health affairs, said any cuts to Medicaid funds for the LSU-run public hospitals and
clinics will shutter services.
“There’s no question we’re in a spot now where we don’t have any cushion,” Cerise said.