“We didn’t need to create a doomsday budget. Governor Jindal did that for us.”
Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne says even though citizens have been told the sky was falling for the past several years, this time everybody better grab an umbrella.
“These are not cherry-picking the worst possible things to get everybody all in a lather. This is the reality of what we’ll have to deal with.”
Dardenne was blunt with the Baton Rouge Press Club Monday, talking about the cuts DHH will have to take as part of curing the 750-million dollar current budget shortfall.
“All we can cut is within the Medicaid budget, and we can either cut part of the deal with the public-private partners, or we can cut optional services under Medicaid.”
Dardenne said he’d spoken with executives for several of the private partners, and was candid about the magnitude of the budgetary problems.
“As we sit right now, the state is simply not going to be able to meet every financial obligation that is laid out in those contracts,” Dardenne said he told the private partners. He added that means, “The hospitals would have a right to walk away from the contract if they are not paid exactly what is specified in the contract.”
There’s an alternative scenario being offered by DHH: “Reducing dramatically or terminating some optional services, which is not a good option and one that we don’t want to exercise.”
That includes terminating hospice care and dialysis treatments—and, potentially, lives.
Dardenne also said he’d met with the Republican Legislative Caucus at their retreat in Lafayette Monday morning, answering questions, and trying to gauge their will for or against revenue-raising measures. He said it was hard to tell where they stood on the administration proposals for resolving the budget crisis, but if the sky does fall, it’s on their heads.
“If the Legislature decides it does not want to support any sources of new revenue, by the very nature of the problem, the most vulnerable are gonna get hit.”