ill to reform nursing home care defeated in committee.

Despite the backing of AARP and good govt. interests, nursing home lobbyists defeated measures to reform the way the State of La. takes care of their elderly which could save over 100 million dollars a year. But this was no surprise.

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The nursing-home industry is among the top sources of campaign cash for legislators and other Louisiana politicians. Owners of nursing homes and their affiliates have poured roughly $6 million into state campaigns during the past decade or so, a tsunami of checks that has helped the industry maintain its powerful hold on lawmakers and state executives.

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The idea was to change the Medicaid System in La. to more of managed care. Even AARP was for this, but the nursing home lobby is too powerful.

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On Wednesday, state Rep. Tony Bacala, R-Prairieville, urged the committee to pass his bill that would have expanded the state's private managed-care model for Medicaid services to the elderly and physically disabled. The rest of the Medicaid program went to this model under former Gov. Bobby Jindal, but the nursing home and long-term care population was left out of the transition.

Managed care, a model used by many other states, means that private insurance companies would be hired to oversee the state's Medicaid services and make determinations about how and where patients should be cared for. Experts assume that insurers would gradually shift more people out of more expensive nursing homes to receive less expensive home care.

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The elderly themselves prefer home based services, but La. unlike most states doesn't see it that way. They spend a larger portion of their Medicaid funds on nursing homes and not home based services.

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The Advocate recently published a three-day series that showed that Louisiana's fealty to nursing homes is unusual. Most other states have moved toward supporting home- and community-based services instead of nursing homes: In Louisiana, 77 percent of the state's Medicaid money for the elderly and physically disabled goes to nursing homes, with home care getting the rest. In most states, that ratio is closer to 60-40.

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Under Bobby Jindal nursing home reforms were studied, but pressure from the lobby halted Jindal's reforms too.

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In Jindal's last two years in office, he assembled a 30-person task force that studied how the state could privatize oversight of long-term care. But the plan, which cost $2.5 million to design and create, was abandoned even though a request for proposals had been completed. The Jindal administration dumped the plan a day after receiving an email from nursing home industry leaders saying they opposed the measure.

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Now its up to Governor Edwards to do the right thing by the elderly and for the state, but even though he ran on nursing home reform it doesn't look like he'll pull the trigger and change the rules either once again proving its not a Dem v R thing, its special interests v the people.

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Bacala agreed that the ball is now in Gov. John Bel Edwards' court. Ahead of his gubernatorial election, Edwards said he supported managed care for the nursing home and long-term care population, but recently told The Advocate he now has serious reservations.

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Add this to the long list of "protected programs" that a broke dick state like La. manages to afford while we let our roads, bridges, and universities crumble.

LINK