There was a time when expanding health coverage was seen as the best way to improve Louisiana’s poor health rankings. Gov. Bobby Jindal supported this idea as recently as November 2008, he was pushing for the “Louisiana Health First” plan, which would have let Louisiana use Medicaid dollars to buy private health coverage for low-income parents and caregivers who earned up to 50 percent of the federal poverty rate – an estimated 60,000 people. The plan also included a pilot program in Lake Charles that would raise Medicaid eligibility to 200 percent of poverty, regardless of whether or not they had children.
Read about that plan and our prescription for Louisiana’s healthcare needs in our op-ed in the Times-Picayune.
