Republican U.S. Sen. John Kennedy blames Louisiana’s Medicaid expansion for everything from cuts to TOPS and low teacher pay to Baton Rouge traffic jams in a new column he released to state newspapers this week, The USA Today Network of Louisiana reports.
Gov. John Bel Edwards expanded the state’s Medicaid program in 2016 through the Affordable Care Act after former Gov. Bobby Jindal had refused to do so.
“The rising cost of Medicaid is why TOPS has been cut,” writes Kennedy, who was Louisiana’s treasurer before being elected to the U.S. Senate. “The rising cost of Medicaid is why we can’t pay our teachers more. The rising cost of Medicaid is why the interstate is a parking lot in Baton Rouge. The rising cost of Medicaid is a core reason the state is running deficits.”
The Edwards’ administration dismissed Kennedy’s claims as false and political. Richard Carbo, the governor’s spokesman, says Kennedy must be using “alternative facts,” a reference to a phrase used by a spokeswoman for President Donald Trump when defending the president’s press secretary for errant inaugural crowd estimates.
Edwards’ Department of Health Secretary Rebekah Gee, who Kennedy criticizes in the column, refuted virtually everything in the senator’s column, saying the Medicaid expansion bolstered state finances to prevent deeper cuts.
“As the recent treasurer I’m surprised he doesn’t know the facts,” Gee tells The USA Today Network of Louisiana. “He should know the Medicaid expansion created $184 million in savings.”
Gee said $67 million of the Medicaid savings went to TOPS, although it’s impossible to say exactly where the savings went since the Legislature can fund or cut where it sees fit.
“This year for the first time in a decade (the agency) came in with a savings,” Gee says. “He’s just plain wrong.”
