One of the biggest conversations coming out of the tax cuts and spending bill that President Trump just signed is the fate of rural hospitals. Democrats have been sounding the alarm, saying that 33 of them across the state will close as a result of cuts to Medicaid. Rustin Loyd, a nurse from Hammond and a former hospital administrator, says those closures will cost lives.
But Mark Ballard, who covered the hearings on Capitol Hill for The Advocate, told Jim Engster on Talk Louisiana that it’s important to note that the Medicaid cuts don’t happen for another two to three years, and hospitals are hoping they can get Congress to reconsider those cuts by then. If they can’t, only then would the effects of those cuts be felt.
Furthermore, the bill also sets up a 50-billion-dollar fund to help struggling rural hospitals.
Senator Bill Cassidy’s re-election campaign announces he has raised a little more than two-million dollars during the second quarter of this year and he now has nine million in cash on hand. Political analyst Bernie Pinsonat says Cassidy needs to be well-funded, with two well-known Republican candidates challenging him in an April primary
They made it official in Vernon Parish this morning – Fort Johnson is now Fort Polk once again. They rededicated Louisiana’s largest military base in a 30-minute ceremony this morning. However, it is not named for its prior namesake, Confederate General Leonidas Polk. Instead, it is now named for General James H. Polk. His son, James H. Polk the Third, addressed the ceremony.