Acting in response to a loud outcry and planned protests, Bobby Jindal has decided not to eliminate funding for hospice care for elderly patients on Medicare. The program has gotten a reprieve until June 30.
But the administration is still looking for ways to cut the costs, such as by cutting reimbursements to providers, encouraging the elderly to get care in homes, not hospices, and reducing the number of people eligible to get end-of-life care.
Count on it: The issue will be back on June 30. And don’t count on anyone in the Jindal administration to act with compassion. That’s not his style.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The sad thing is that hospice care is one of the most economical of all programs. It encourages people to recognize that the end is inevitable and stop spending time and money (and hope) on more and more treatments that do nothing to extend the quantity of life, but which drastically decrease quality of life. Hospice allows people to rest easy in their remaining time precisely because it’s so affordable. It keeps people out of hospitals and emergency rooms where they would otherwise turn for pain management. And from what I understand (although I’m too lazy to research at the moment), most hospice patients do choose to stay at home. Most who go to facilities either don’t have a home to stay at or need a higher level of care than can be provided in the home.
Even if there’s no appeal to Jindal’s heart (being as he doesn’t have one), it at least seems that the economic argument would appeal.
Of course, now that I think about it, educating a child for 12 years is a heckuva lot cheaper than incarcerating him for the rest of his life, but that argument never seems to go anywhere either. Further proof that Republicans are about as “fiscally responsible” as I am athletic.
Yes, but if you educate a child, he is less likely to become a conservative. If you just lock him up, he can’t vote!
Yes, most do choose to stay home although there are some residential hospices. What Jindal wants is to incarcerate them in for profit nursing homes. Hospice teams go to the people and support the caregivers as well as providing medical and comfort care. In addition people in hospice can still be treated for conditions that are not going to be the cause of death, such as allowing them to have dialysis. Hospice teams try to treat the whole person.
And the Republicans had the chutzpah to talk about death panels!
Louisiana is in the top 5 for cancer deaths, infant death, and AIDS. Baton Rouge, the capital is #1 in America for new AIDS infections. And the busline (such that it is) ends well before it reaches the new Women’s Hospital where most of the babies are delivered and women receive ob/gyn care. They have to walk from the last bus stop to the hospital down a 4-lane highway and can only get a van if they have Medicaid. It also makes parents with premature babies (high rate for that too) at Women’s walk down Airline Highway (61) if they don’t have a car to see their child. The transportation issue happened because Jindal closed down the North Baton Rouge ob/gyn clinic. He is also closing down the public hospital in April which will leave North Baton Rouge, the poorest part of the city, with NO hospital. I only wonder how long it will take for us to have a baby born on the median of this busy 4-lane.
Jindal is creating death panels by depriving the poorest neighborhoods, the ones that did not vote for him, of medical care. Lake is also so far away and has so much congestion, that the gunshot cases are likely to die on the way from North Baton Rouge, the highest murder area. The hospital (Our Lady of the Lake) that is supposed to take over for Earl K. Long, the public hospital, which does have limited public transportation is Catholic and refused to take EKL’s ob/gyn care or the prisoners. So they got to pick and choose. Jindal is Catholic.
Is it my imagination or didn’t he mention the other day that Repubs need to stop being the party of stupid?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/republicans/9825942/Bobby-Jindal-Republicans-must-stop-being-the-stupid-party.html
Nope, you did not hear wrong. He wants them to change their image and give a more inclusive appearance to the GOP. Go on 2theAdvocate and read the Baton Rouge Louisiana newspaper. If you just put in “Advocate” you will get the gay magazine.
This is completely off-topic but too good not to share. Not content with just the charter school chain he co-founded in Detroit, Clark Dumont is now part of a trio who have proposed buying an island in the Detroit RIver, seceding from the city and state, and starting a free-market utopia. http://www.balloon-juice.com/2013/01/28/moving-the-overton-window/ No, I am not kidding. Follow the links.
It wasn’t even hospices he wanted the elderly put in. He wanted them locked up in NURSING HOMES if they wanted hospice care—-you know, untrained staff paid minimum wage and lots of abuse and neglect, purgatory pre-death. It took a demonstration on the Capitol steps to slow his roll on this one. Thing is, by June he will have had his annual coercion of the state legislature under his belt and with his success in school destruction last year, there is no telling what will happen except that it won’t be good. An old barge turned loose on the Mighty Mississippi perhaps?? The river goes conveniently through Baton Rouge. Plus June is the start of hurricane season and if it looks like it could be an ugly one, the people will be occupied with that.
One note on the law change is that he also cut off physical, occupational, and speech therapy for adults covered by Medicaid who were not incarcerated in nursing homes. This means that our older special education students could be deprived of the therapy services they might need to go along with their work and independent living related programs. And you question what will happen to young adults who are in accidents. Will they have to be locked up to get therapy since they are not likely to have insurance or have built up enough years for Medicare?
Bobby Jindal is nothing but a Satan inspired beast. Remember that name y’all for 2016. I can see the party of the white boys nominating him to show America that they are striving to be inclusive. He is very short (Maybe 5’3″ and 140lbs) and brown, the son of immigrants from India so he would exactly fit the more inclusive image the GOP wants to cultivate without making any real changes.
PS: She may have been kidding but someone in the newspaper today said he was trying to get rid of teacher tenure when he was in the first grade!
Jindal usually targets those living in poverty, and since hospice serves a wide variety of our state population, I think maybe he finally hit a nerve with people of means. I am sure hospice has helped many in our state who have had a family member who required their services. Hospice doesn’t just serve high poverty families. Death does not discriminate. That’s the only reason I can figure that he backed down, since nothing else so far has. I think Jindal is trying to recreate India’s caste system here in Louisiana??? How else would one explain his obsession with targeting the poor.