Former La. governor is less than optimistic over Jindal’s chances of winning presidency

15th June 2015   ·   0 Comments

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

Appearing on WBOK 1230 AM’s Inside City Hall program, former Gov. Kathleen Blanco noted of her successor’s Presidential ambitions, “Well let me just say I think he’s beatable because I beat him. But beyond the obvious, Bobby [Jindal] claims to place a lot of value on detailed, written policies. In every case, a detailed written policy needs to show itself, and play itself, out. I frankly think he’s going to have a difficult time nationally. Instead of adopting Grover Norquist as the guru for his ticket up [the GOP presidential sweepstakes], he should have played on what he claims are his strengths. He has given the acknowledgment that he has some knowledge of healthcare. And he should’ve used Louisiana as a demonstration project to show that he could change the healthcare delivery system.”

Blanco wisely did not attack Jindal on his fiscal choices, beyond the jab at his devotion to the anti-tax dictums of the conservative advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform. The former Democratic Governor only enjoyed a surplus in her final year thanks to the spike in sales taxes due to a Hurricane reconstruction windfall, and attacking Jindal’s budgetary record would have left her open to criticism on the failed appropriations structure of her much-reviled Road Home Program.

Instead, Blanco aimed her fire at Louisiana’s nearly bankrupt healthcare infrastructure, and Gov. Jindal’s responsibility for this underfinanced confusion left in the wake of his attempts to privatize the public hospital system. He ran as an expert bent on revolutionizing the Health Care system in Louisiana, she noted, and yet, “All he did actually was change the management from the public sector to the private sector. We have changed management many times over the years, and so that experiment has already been done.”

Jindal once told the editors of The Louisiana Weekly, “We should not question whether we should have universal health care. The answer to that is ‘Of course.’” The only question is the how. Blanco charged in her interview that he missed that opportunity by not being creative enough. Instead of embracing new sources of funding under Affordable Care Act, and attempting to seek federal wavers to employ the dollars creatively, Jindal instead kept to the traditional method of health care operation. The Louisiana Governor utilized dwindling pools of federal funds to attract private operators for public hospitals—sources of money that Obamacare was slowing phasing out in favor of expanding Medicaid.

“[Jindal] is still paying for health care with the same federal dollars that are shrinking,” Blanco continued. “In fact the plan that he’s using, those dollars are now being phased out at the federal level because federal government has changed and they no longer finance uninsured people the same way they have been doing over the years. The state is not particularly well-positioned to adapt to these changes.”

Jindal had a chance to prepare for that change in financing, with creative solutions that might have made a splash in the GOP nominating contest. He choose not to. “We were supposed to be stepping into it and changing our model, but we have not followed the national model of the affordable healthcare act. And we’re in this limbo, and all of the new contractors are complaining. The private hospitals are complaining because enough money hasn’t been given to them to provide the services that they have been asked to provide. So it’s a very bad Catch-22. I just think as a political platform he could’ve demonstrated to the nation that he had a better plan. In affect his plan is falling far short of his ability to function.”

Blanco’s implication rested on the idea that Jindal could have adopted a system similar to Arkansas, where a waiver was sought to use Medicaid dollars to expand the subsidies for private insurance in the state exchanges — a conservative reform made within the structure of the Affordable Care Act. Thinking outside of the box would have accelerated his presidential chances. Now, she surmises, Jindal has no chance.

Blanco predicted that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, and Jeb Bush will stand for the GOP. Jindal could have been the standard-bearer for the Republicans if he had only played up his strengths—and his creativity, but the only politician who ever defeated the former wunderkind said, “He chose not to.”

This article originally published in the June 15, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.