Katie Connolly took the time to look into one of the "backroom deals" that conservatives criticized in the health-care reform bill and discovered that the "Louisiana Purchase" isn't that bad after all. Turns out the controversial adjustment to the state's Medicaid funding was more about making up for the costs of Hurricane Katrina than buying Sen. Mary Landrieu's vote:
Even before, Obama took office, Landrieu promised to seek a fix for this problem, arguing that it would not only have blown an enormous hole in the state's budget, but threatened the ability of the state's poor to access care. Louisiana's Republican Governor and possible presidential aspirant, Bobby Jindal, agreed with her, as did Louisiana's Health Secretary Alan Levine.
The fix that Landrieu negotiated during the health care debate would work for any state experiencing a natural disaster of significant proportions. If that state, like Louisiana, sees an 8 percentage point drop in it's federal Medicaid payments, it too would be eligible for the fix, which would make up for imminent shortfalls. The Louisiana Fix is perhaps more appropriately called the Giant Devastating Natural Disaster Remedy To Ensure Medicaid Doesn't Go Bust. ... It's good policy, it's poliitcally appropriate, and it deserves to be portrayed fairly.
Emphasis mine. The provision has been demonized like many other positive ideas in the health reform bill. But in a pattern we'll see for a while to come, the cold light of day dispels the notion that these ideas are pernicious socialism, or anything other than attempts to improve a failing system.
On a related note, did you know the original Lousiana Purchase was only approved by two votes in the House? Just imagine if the Federalists had been able to deploy procedural tricks to prevent Thomas Jefferson from making a deal that greatly expanded the United States. With Republican leader John Boehner accusing the Democrats of disgracing Jeffersonian values, who knew that our third president was the earliest practitioner of Chicago-style thug politics?
-- Tim Fernholz
