As Louisiana lawmakers grapple with a $1.6 billion budget deficit and a crisis in higher education financing, another funding woe could lead to a devastating impact on health care in the state.
When Gov. Bobby Jindal privatized nine LSU-run hospitals and their clinics in 2013, Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana, known as BRF, took control of the Shreveport and Monroe hospitals.
But now The Shreveport Times reports the issue of funding could put those privatization deals in jeopardy if the state can’t come up with the base funding. Failure to provide that funding could allow private partners to opt out of their contracts.
In Jindal’s budget, one-third of hospital funding depends on tax changes that are uncertain to win passage from state legislators. The House Appropriations Committee was told the governor’s $9.5 billion health care spending plan for the fiscal year that begins July 1 relies on $407 million from Jindal’s proposal to shrink spending on certain tax breaks.
Most of that uncertain money, $332 million, is plugged into payments for Jindal’s contracts that turned over the LSU-run hospitals and clinics to private managers. If those dollars don’t show up, hospital payments would be cut from more than $1.1 billion to $815 million under the governor’s budget.
Health and Hospitals Secretary Kathy Kliebert told lawmakers without the base funding, these hospitals could see their private-sector partners requesting out of their contracts or reducing services offered by the hospitals. If a partner pulled out of the agreement, the hospital would revert to LSU.
