DHH: Medicaid expansion could save state money

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration quietly released a new financial analysis that estimates the state could save as much as $368 million over 10 years by expanding Louisiana’s Medicaid program under the federal health care law, The Associated Press reports. The analysis was posted on the Department of Health and Hospitals’ website this week, but wasn’t mentioned during a budget hearing in which lawmakers pushed for more information about the expansion and Jindal’s refusal to participate in it. The report updates an analysis done three years ago for the Jindal administration and puts the cost estimates more in line with other nonpartisan research done about the impact of the Medicaid expansion. The new DHH estimates say Louisiana could save anywhere from $197 million to $368 million over 10 years while covering more than 577,000 additional people. On the high end, if 653,000 new people are covered and the Medicaid expansion forces up the rates paid to health care providers, the report says the state could face a price tag topping $1.7 billion over a decade. Jindal opposes the expansion as inappropriate growth of what he says is an inefficient government entitlement program. He says health insurance is better left to the private market and that states should have more flexibility to design their own programs. “State policy makers cannot afford to ignore the fact that expanding an inefficient 1960s-era entitlement program limits choice and fails to fully integrate its recipients into the broader health care system,” the DHH report says.