Let's Do a Facts Check

Yesterday, September 3, 2014, a media release by the Jindal Administration entitled, “Health care reforms good for Louisiana” appeared in the Hammond Star.

It is important for Louisiana residents to realize that this positive report was largely based upon unverified data submitted by the insurance companies awarded the contracts to implement the Bayou Health plans for Medicaid recipients.  These reported facts WERE NOT based upon an independent, unbiased assessment of the privatization plans presently operating within our state.

As a matter of fact, a summary evaluation from the state legislative auditor said the Jindal administration’s positive report on the status of Medicaid privatization lacks information supporting  the “global assertions” of cost savings and improved health outcomes cited in that report.  The independent auditor’s report faults the Jindal release on two issues. One is that the privatized management of Bayou Health plans is not independently assessed.  Secondly, the comparisons between traditional Medicaid and the new privatization do not use apples-to-apples data.

“This lack of comparability renders most comparisons of Bayou Health data to legacy Medicaid data skewed and not useful,” according to the auditor’s report.

Regarding the statements concerning the Office of Group Benefits having to raise its premiums and revamp all its insurance plans due to Obamacare, that is a total deception.  The cause of all the changes that will occur to the OGB insurance plans is the result of the Jindal’s mismanagement of the plans since he decided to “fix” them.

Two years ago, he reduced members’ insurance premiums by 8%, which the state pays a portion of, in order to help balance the state budget.  This lead to not enough funds being collected to cover the costs of the plans, resulting in a 5% premium increase in July of this year.  This increase was NOT a result of Obamacare as stated in Jindal’s media release, but an attempt to undo Bobby’s mismanagement.  All the OGB plans were operating quite successfully before the implementation of “Bobbycare.”  I am no fan of Obamacare, but you can’t blame the present OGB mess on it. This disaster rests solely with the Jindal administration and all present members of the OGB insurance plans will pay dearly.

Where’s the data??

Well it is pretty obvious from Thursday’s legislative public hearing on the changes being implemented by the Office of Group Benefits that we have a new person sitting in the governor’s chair, Kristy Nichols, Commissioner of Administration.  She was the star of the show in attempting to address the reasons for the massive changes in the state insurance plans that are being implemented on the backs of approximately 230,000 state retirees, teachers and workers.   Where was Bobby?

She used all the panic catch words like, “outlook dim”, “changes imperative”, “soon go broke”,  in attempting to justify the present insurance plans that  must be selected by OGB members by October 31^st. 

However, there was something missing from her defense, actuarial valuations. 

An actuarial valuation is a type of report which requires making economic and demographic assumptions in order to estimate future liabilities.

These technical reports provide full disclosure of the financial and funding status of financed agencies.  They are prepared to predict the future financial impact of funding changes proposed for entities.

Insurance companies use them all the time to predict how much money they will need in premiums to offset the cost of claims and still remain profitable. 

I have one question for Ms. Nichols.  Where were the actuarial reports showing what the impact was going to be on the OGB state insurance plans when Jindal implemented his across-the-board 8% premium reduction for 2 years?

They apparently did one for the state budget impact, because Jindal’s minions figured out how much  money the state would save by the reduction in premiums.   This would occur because the state pays up to 75% of retirees’ health premiums, and if you reduce them, the state has to come up with less money; thus the purported savings. 

Jindal and Nichols are not stupid individuals.  The lack of these reports was not due to incompetence or oversight.  They simply didn’t care what happened to the insurance plans.  Their only concern was for a balanced state budget proposal.  

After implementation of the 8% premium reduction, the insurance plans started going south due to a failure of not enough premium monies to offset the insurance medical claims costs.   Jindal’s crew panicked and immediately implemented an across-the-board 5% premium increase.   

However that still left them 3% short of putting things back to the original levels.  But remember, each percent of premium increase would cost the state more money and Bobby’s servants wanted to protect the state budget which was already operating at a loss. 

So while Nichols goes on and on about the poor health of the retirees and rising insurance cost due to Obamacare,  I’m pretty confident that, if the Jindal administration had approached the OGB insurance problem from an actuarial valuation of the insurance plans AND the state budget, some truly workable solution could have been found that would not devastate those OGB retirees on a fixed income. 

Some have claimed that the ultimate goal of the Jindal administration is to force everyone out of the state insurance plans, thus saving the state big bucks.

After all he can’t cut education and medical services anymore and survive in his bid for a presidential nod.  And he certainly can’t raise taxes and survive.  Consequently, he must find other creative ways to balance the state budget.  

I would like to see Bobby and Nichols submit an actuarial valuation which focuses on utilizing the original OGB premiums rates BEFORE Bobby's rollback coupled with the implementation of an across-the-board 5% premium increase.  I bet no additional changes would have to be made to any of the present plans.

Louisiana Infrastructures Dismal

I must compliment Bobby Jindal on the fact that he and his administration have left no stone unturned when it comes to negatively impacting the quality of life in our state.  Not only have they destructively impacted educational services, health care services, and recreational services, they have now received recognition for their demise of Louisiana’s infrastructures, namely its roadways and bridges.

Under Bobby’s guidance Louisiana has moved from 24^th in its highway conditions and spending in 2011 to 40^th in the nation in the latest findings of the 21^st Annual Highway Report released by the Reason Foundation.  Our state also ranks 39^th in the condition of its bridges.  Roads rated as poor in urban areas rose to three times higher than the national average, while poor rural roads rose to double the national average.

This latest indictment of Louisiana stands in sharp contrast to a very positive aspect of our state which Jindal takes great pride in and pushes often in his national political forums.

It is Louisiana’s rise to No. 6 in the Site Selection 2013 Top U.S. Business Climates.  It is the state’s highest-ever placement in the magazine’s annual ranking. Just four years ago, Louisiana ranked No. 25. Jindal has accomplished this by offering large tax breaks and monetary incentives to businesses if they will choose to open shop in Louisiana.

Jindal often touts this as proof of his successful governing of Louisiana as evidenced by his recent media release: 

“For decades, Louisiana was losing jobs and our people because we did not have a good business environment. Companies were fleeing our state because of high taxes, and other companies didn’t give us a second look because our state was too corrupt. We set out to reverse that trend more than five years ago by eliminating taxes that stifled growth, reining in government spending, overhauling governmental ethics laws, revamping workforce training programs, and providing more educational opportunities for families. Because of these reforms, we have more jobs in Louisiana than at any point in our state’s history. Indeed, this latest ranking confirms that we are on the right path to create more opportunities for our people.”  

I can’t argue with Jindal’s success in this area.  However, if you are literally giving away the state economically with business tax breaks and monetary incentives funded at the expense of the wellbeing of its residents, I have serious concerns.

And most likely once businesses figure out the poor conditions the state has to offer in terms of quality of education,  healthcare and infrastructure, all the tax breaks and incentives in the world won’t satisfy these essential needs that companies desire for their employees.  

It’s only a matter of time until his economic plan all unravels, but Jindal prays it will last long enough until he receives his national presidential bid.  In the meantime he is perfectly happy sacrificing Louisianans to accomplish HIS goal.

Louisiana students deserve better

Beginning in 1989, legislation was passed in this state to implement educational reform.  This was the birth date of the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program, commonly referred to as LEAP.  The program consisted of state-developed educational standards coupled with state-developed assessments to monitor students’ progress in mastering these standards.  High states testing occurred at the 4^th, 8th, and senior high levels.  Basically this meant that if student did not perform satisfactory on the tests at the 4^th and 8^th grade they were held back until they mastered these tests.  At the senior high level, students could not receive a diploma until they mastered the tests.

Throughout the 18 or so years of LEAP’s implementation Louisiana has received glowing praise for this educational reform movement, not only from state education reform advocates such as Leslie Jacobs, but also from esteemed national journals such as Education Week.  In fact, Education Week gave Louisiana an A plus on our state developed standards, a statistic most often repeated by our educational leaders.

How times have changed.  A group affiliate with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation just gave Louisiana ‘Fs’ for academic achievement, how students fare compared to dollars spent, readiness for college and careers, and international competitiveness.

As far as the state-developed assessments, Louisiana was given a D plus on the validity of the math and English exams as compared to NATIONAL assessments.  Basically what that means is the Louisiana exams were not measuring students’ abilities to achieve nationally.  The state tests only compared English and math skills of Louisiana students to each other, and gave little or no information regarding their national academic ability.   It’s kind of like what I like to term “educational inbreeding.”

And to make matters worse, school curriculums were designed around these tests.

However, that was not the intent of the LEAP reform movement.  Its goal was to provide Louisiana students with an education that would allow them to be successfully competitive nationally.

All recent data indicates that after millions of dollars spent, years of holding students back, and denying diplomas to thousands, we have been misled not only by our local educational reformers, but also by national journals.  There has been no significant movement in Louisiana’s ranking on NATIONAL achievement tests during the entire LEAP implementation.

As Bobby Jindal and other ultra conservatives continue to push their anti-Common Core Standards agenda, I would like to know what they suggest as the alternative to an approach that attempts to address Louisiana’s problem of “educational inbreeding”, by the development of a set of standards that seek to ensure all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live.

Will the Common Core standards be 100% successful?  Not sure, but they did include a considerable amount of expertise in their development; a national consortium representing teachers, business leaders, educational leaders, state governors and parents.

And the standards are:

   1. Research and evidence-based

   2. Clear, understandable, and consistent

   3. Aligned with college and career expectations

   4. Based on rigorous content and application of knowledge     through higher-order thinking   skills

   5. Built upon the strengths and lessons of current state standards

   6. Informed by other top performing countries in order to    prepare all students for success in our global economy and society 

However, one thing is certain, Louisiana can no longer be trusted to educate their youth on its own.  So let’s put a stop to all the misinformation about a government plot to take over of our education system and get on with the business of providing our students with the education they deserve, for this is far more important than political grand standing.

 

Kristy Nichols’ new job as state clairvoyant

Kristy Nichols was hired by Bobby Jindal as Commissioner of Administration.  She is Bobby’s lead puppet, Pinocchio, and with all the justifications she has issued over the years for Bobby’s failed plans, it’s amazing that her nose has remained remarkably small.

However, apparently we folks in Louisiana got a bonus when Jindal hired her.  She is now also a clairvoyant right up there in the company of Dionne Warwick.  She can predict the future health of individuals.  In her latest attempt to cover up Jindal’s failed initiative in privatizing the Office of Group Benefits leading to the bankruptcy of the state employees’ and retirees’ health insurance plans, she claims that many Group Benefits’ members have policies that cover “more than they need” and that, “thousands of people can save money.”

I wonder if she predicted that recent fall off her bike when she needed medical services?

Please don’t forget that the Office of Group Benefits was running a completely successful insurance entity BEFORE Bobby and his experts decided to “fix” it.  The plans offered had relatively low premiums while providing excellent benefits.   Benefits dubbed “Cadillac Plans” by Nichols.

Each year the Group Benefits Office received excellent reviews by the state legislative auditors and national experts.  However, that all changed when Bobby and his experts took over the reins.  They have in effect bankrupted all the medical plans presently offered by the Group Benefits Office.

They did this by rolling back the insurance premiums for the last two years in order to balance the state budget, resulting in not enough money to cover the health claims.  The state pays up to 75% of a member’s insurance premium. When Jindal lowered the premiums, the state’s costs were reduced and he could balance the budget.  If Jindal had not reduced the premiums and not outsourced the OGB to a private company, NONE of this mess would have occurred.  The insurance plans would have continued to run successfully. 

But now the employees are going to have to enlist the services of a fortune teller regarding their health care.

If you think you won’t get sick, or have a medical emergency, the state will let you select a low premium plan with an extremely high out-of-pocket cost.  If you desire a better coverage plan, similar to that presently offered, it is going to cost you big time, with higher premiums,  up to 47% higher out-of- pocket costs, higher copayments, AND a deductible.   The sad part is, those most in need of this good coverage are the elderly retirees on a fix income.  These are the least likely to be able to afford it, and thus forced to pick the cheaper plan based solely upon economics.

Of course Jindal is going to blame all these increased insurance costs, coupled with reduced benefits, on Obamacare, when in reality they are all the result of "Bobbycare."

But don’t worry!  If you need help deciding if you might get sick, hurt on the job, hurt around your house, or be involved in an auto accident, just drop clairvoyant Kristy Nichols a note and she’ll be able to tell if you’re one of the chosen few that don’t need good coverage so you don’t  pay for, ”more than you need.”  Good luck with that!

Louisiana students, the sacrificial lambs

As Bobby Jindal continues to spend taxpayers’ money on law suits attempting to prevent the implementation of the Common Core Standards and the tests used to measure mastery of them, he  repeatedly advocates that Louisiana should develop its own standards and assessments. He’s not alone in this advocacy, for State Rep. Brett Geymann, R-Lake Charles, who with 17 other legislators just lost in court in their attempt to stop Common Core implementation, also claims that abandoning them, “will give us a chance to develop our own standards equal or higher than what we have today.”

I can’t believe that the opponents of the standards still keep proposing this in-state development plan as an alternative to utilizing the Common Core Standards.

So for the last time Mr. Jindal, Mr. Geymann, and anyone else who believes Louisiana can do a better job by developing their own standards and assessments, WE DID THIS FOR 20 YEARS!  It was known as the Louisiana Education Assessment Program (LEAP) and it has resulted in our kids still being ranked 48^th or 50th in reading and math skills on the most recent national survey.

Additionally, the just released ACT scores, a national test of college readiness measuring English, math, science and reading skills given to both private and public high school seniors and juniors, show that the state’s average score has dropped yet again, and that only North Carolina, Hawaii and Mississippi have lower scores.

Where is there one shred of evidence to support this in-state approach?  Louisiana has robbed generations of children of a good education; one that would allow them to be competitive no matter where they chose to live in our nation.  And that should be the ultimate standard of a truly good educational system; the standard which the Common Core Standards seek to address.

You’d think a Rhodes Scholar, who received one of the finest educations possible (Brown University and Oxford University), would want that for the children he serves.  Jindal certainly wants that for his own children by enrolling them in some of the finest schools in our state.  And yet, he couldn't care less about your own children, and he is willing to sacrifice them for a possible slim chance of a presidential bid. 

The sad part about all this mess is, in reality, Jindal couldn't care less about Common Core, for he has no core belief systems of his own regarding most issues.  Instead he simply adopts whatever the ultra-conservative power brokers consider media attention issues at the present time.  Five months ago, it was all about rejecting Medicaid expansion funding under Obamacare.  Now it’s the Core Standards.

How blessed we are to have such a wonderful governor.

How dumb does Jindal think we are?

If you’re a state employee or retiree and a member of one of the state’s Office of Group Benefits Insurance Plans, better prepare yourself for premium sticker shock accompanied by increased out of pocket expenses and reduced health care benefits.

A recent commentary by one of the newer Jindal appointed Group Benefit Policy and Planning Board members goes on and on about how the privatization by Jindal of the Group Benefits Office has led to a more efficient insurance system.   Interestingly, most of the praise and data that this appointee references about the Group Benefits Office, in terms of providing good benefits while successfully keeping premium increases below the national average, occurred during the years BEFORE Jindal’s privatization move.

For those not familiar with the Office of Group Benefits, basically prior to 2012, state-paid employees administered health insurance for state employees and retirees.  Their responsibilities included processing claims, running a state designed PPO plan and formulating contractual agreements with health care providers such as Humana, United Health, BlueCross/Blue Shield, etc.  to provide HMO service plans for participants.

Contrary to what we usually think about state employee run ventures, they did such a great job that Group Benefits was recognized as one the most successful and efficiently run health insurance entities in the country.  Their self-run PPO plan was also lauded for it success. They had amassed a health reserve fund of over a half billion dollars and kept health cost premiums contained while providing excellent benefits to its plan members. 

That all changed when Bobby and his crew took over, fired just about everyone working there, and farmed out the services to a private corporation in the name of cost savings.  Additionally, he made changes to the group benefits governing board.

Jindal and his experts in just two years have taken a successful operating insurance system and turned it into  an operating loss, with its health reserve fund now almost depleted.    The Louisiana Voice reports that, “Jindal’s plan for saving $20 million a year through the privatization of OGB has been less than a smashing success as the agency has hemorrhaged red ink to the tune of $16 million more per month than it receives in premiums.”

Now the PR from Group Benefits Jindal-appointed board members is that the plans previously offered by the Office of Group Benefits are ,”so rich that if they aren’t changed they will trigger a ‘Cadillac tax’ of $31 million in upcoming years.”

If all that sounds confusing basically it means that they’ve screwed up the good health insurance plans previously offered to state employees and retirees so badly that they’re going to have to bail out these plans on the backs of the members by raising deductibles, reducing services, and raising premiums.  And the great part is the Jindal administration doesn’t have to worry about being blamed for any of this because they are just going to tell everyone that it’s the result of Obamacare. 

However, it is important to realize that the real goal for the Jindal administration is to force ALL state employees and retirees out of the Group Benefits Health Insurance Plans altogether, for the state currently pays part of a retiree’s health insurance premium.   This partial premium payment is legislatively mandated and the chances of getting it repealed are miniscule.  And, since Bobby has cut education and medical services to the bone and still can’t produce a balanced state budget, he is running out of sources of money.  Therefore he has set his sights on reducing participants in Group Benefits Health Insurance Plans to fill the budgetary gaps by making the plans unattractive and unaffordable for the services and coverages offered.

Of course, the resultant outcome of Bobby’s latest plan will be more uninsured in Louisiana.

I just pray we can all stay healthy and survive until Jindal leaves office.