Louisiana’s health department was blocked from moving forward with a new round of multi-billion dollar Medicaid contracts while protests from losing bidders move forward, over objections from health officials who said such a delay could disrupt health care for more than a million people.
The state procurement office, which is considering protests from two losing bidders for the new round of Medicaid managed care contracts, decided late Wednesday the new contracts will be put on hold until it sorts out the challenges.
Paula Tregre, Louisiana’s chief procurement officer, said she decided to keep the stay in place because LDH already indicated to lawmakers there would be no disruption of services to current Medicaid enrollees if the protests stretched past Dec. 31, when the current contracts are set to expire. An attorney with LDH suggested at a recent budget hearing it would seek temporary emergency contracts if that happened.
Later, though, LDH asked Tregre to allow the department to negotiate the new contracts and enrolling patients. It also backed off the prospect of emergency contracts, raising questions about whether the idea would work.
“The stay will introduce additional, catastrophic delay and uncertainty in the operation of the program as we understand that the stay may bar LDH from proceeding further with negotiating the terms of the contracts and awarding the contracts to the four MCOs that will manage the Medicaid healthcare services,” LDH Secretary Rebekah Gee wrote in a letter to Tregre.
The losing bidders, Louisiana Healthcare Connections and Aetna, had asked the state to block the new contracts from moving forward while their protests play out. LHCC pointed to recent comments by the health department’s general counsel, Stephen Russo, that the agency had planned what to do if the protests were successful.
Gov. John Bel Edwards administration’s health department earlier this year launched a bidding process for new contracts for companies that manage care for the state’s 1.7 million Medicaid enrollees under a privatized model put in place by former Gov. Bobby Jindal. Currently, five companies operate as managed care organizations, or MCOs, in the state. In early August, LDH announced it had selected four companies to do the work, and it dropped from its list two existing MCOs–Louisiana Healthcare Connections and Aetna. It selected Humana, a newcomer to Louisiana’s Medicaid program, and three existing MCOs.
The decision sparked a backlash from the losing bidders, especially LHCC, which is the largest MCO and is the subsidiary of insurance giant Centene Corporation. LHCC workers protested at the Secretary of State offices earlier this month as Edwards qualified for reelection. Congressman Cedric Richmond penned a letter to Edwards raising concerns about the move. A new group called Caring Health Solutions has begun running billboards chastising the governor for leaving out LHCC.
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