State and LSU health care officials tell legislators that they’re accelerating their drive to finalize agreements with private partners, with the goal of having all operational in June or July. This week’s announcement that Lake Charles Memorial would take over operations of W.D. Moss means the state has found half of the private partners it needs to facilitate a rapid transition that began in June, when Congress cut Medicaid funding to the state. The biggest piece remaining is the fate of three north Louisiana hospitals and the medical school in Shreveport. The state’s original strategy was to find one private partner to take over the hospitals in Shreveport, Monroe and Alexandria; but Hospitals Secretary Bruce Greenstein has told the House Health and Welfare Committee that a market analysis shows the state would do better with separate partners.
—Lawmakers say governor’s aides tell them that a 1.6-cent increase in the state sales tax is being considered in order to partially compensate for Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposed elimination of personal and corporate income taxes. Yet Revenue Department spokesman Douglas Baker says that number is “purely speculative” and that no figure has been set. Growing criticism of the tax swap concept puts pressure on the administration to answer objections. Baker says the Revenue Department would show next week the process it is using to project revenues on the tax changes, which would include an anticipated increase in economic activity from getting rid of the income tax.
They said it: “He talks like Ronald Reagan, but he governs like FDR.” —Congressman Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, on President Barack Obama, in The Times-Picayune.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
