Last week’s failure of one-third of the members of the Louisiana Senate to sign a petition that would have triggered a formal vote on whether legislators would call themselves into special session to address the state’s growing health care crisis was not a good day for people concerned about the future well-being of state and our people.
One comment, in particular, attributed to an anonymous Republican legislator by Louisiana Politics Weekly, suggests that closing the state’s public hospitals has become the official policy of the Louisiana Republican Party.
The quote said that the only thing standing in the way of that legislator’s signing of Representative Dee Richard’s petition was the fact that Democrats accompanied Richard when he delivered his documents to the House Clerk Albert Speer.
“Does that mean that Republicans are in favor of closing the LSU hospitals, of costing thousands of workers their jobs, of disrupting the care of tens of thousands of patients, and destabilizing the pipeline we use to train doctors in this state,” asked an anonymous Democrat.
A Republican pollster recently found that more than 80% of Louisiana voters opposed (90% in some regions) deeper cuts in the LSU hospital system. Those findings were in a poll released three days before the Governor Jindal’s hand-picked LSU Board of Supervisors voted to do just that — implement more cuts.
If Jindal’s policy is now the official policy of Louisiana Republicans, they should claim ownership of these wildly unpopular policies.
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Originally published: Oct 30, 2012