LAHP says don’t wait on D.C. for health care reform

Gil Dupré, CEO of the Louisiana Association of Health Plans, thinks Louisiana should go ahead with DHH Secretary Alan Levine’s Medicaid reform plans and not wait to see what develops on the national level. Dupré notes that sweeping changes to national health care policy have been “just around the corner” since the Nixon administration but haven’t happened yet. Dupré says Levine’s reform plan, which preserves a central role for health plan companies, is “very much in keeping” with what’s being discussed on Capitol Hill, with a recognition in Washington that it makes sense to tap the expertise of the private insurance sector. The fly in the ointment is that Louisiana hasn’t received the necessary waiver from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to perform its reform experiment, and likely won’t anytime soon seeing that the agency is between chiefs right now, none having been appointed to date by the Obama administration. Levine says some aspects of reform, such as disease management programs, can be instituted without the federal waiver.—Steve Clark