Do over

Bobby Jindal's diligent work privatizing hospitals is coming to naught.

The federal government Friday rejected the Jindal administration’s financing plan for privatizing the administration of LSU hospitals.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services questioned the administration’s use of $260.8 million in advance lease payments to prop up the deals involving six public hospitals, including those in New Orleans, Lafayette and Houma. If the decision stands, the state would have to find another way to cover those payments.

“It is not about how Louisiana manages its charity care system,” wrote Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in a letter released late Friday.
It’s how “specific financial transactions” are organized.

The private hospital companies leasing the state’s charity hospitals agreed to pay up-front a larger proportion of their long-term leases, which would result in paying lesser amounts toward the end of the contracts. But Tavenner wrote the arrangement amounted to Louisiana trying to get extra federal Medicaid dollars to repay private managers for those advanced lease payments.

If I were a suspicious person I might wonder about Jindal's relationships with the various management companies.  That used to be the sort of thing that drew attention.