In his Letter to the Editor “Levine estimates miss the mark,” published in the June 30, 2010, edition of the Baton Rouge Advocate, LBP Director Edward Ashworth corrects Louisiana’s Secretary of Health and Hospitals’ inflated estimate of the state’s cost of federal healthcare reform. Here’s an excerpt:
The Jindal administration’s fight against federal health-care reform has ranged from the unfounded to the unseemly.
In the unfounded department, as noted in the Advocate’s June 22 editorial, “A GOP take on new costs,” Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine predicts health-care reform will cost the state $7.1 billion over a decade.
But that number is based largely on Medicaid participation rates assumptions that are way too high.
