I heard that during the debate she stated it was $300 million for her constituents... AND SAID SHE WAS NOT ASHAMED OF THE BRIBE BUT **PROUD**
ha ha - we'll see about that in 2010...
"Look," said [Louisiana secretary of health and hospitals] Alan Levine, who has been lobbying the administration and Congress on the FMAP issue for eight months, "it's good to have a senator in a position to be able to make demands like that."
The stimulus plan increased the share of Medicaid paid by Washington for 27 months — through the end of next year — while sparing states any reductions in their FMAP formula in the meantime.
The net result is that the federal government is paying 81.48 percent of Louisiana’s Medicaid costs, a figure that will plunge nearly 18 percentage points come Jan. 1, 2011. That would cost Louisiana, according to Levine, some $900 million a year for the ensuing three years. It would, he has warned, wreck the state’s budget.
The Obama administration has insisted that only legislation can fix the formula, and on pages 432 to 436 of the Senate health care bill is Landrieu’s answer.
Section 2006 is entitled, “Special Adjustment to FMAP Determination For Certain States Recovering From a Major Disaster.’’ Louisiana is the only state that qualifies. Landrieu’s remedy would halve any decrease in Louisiana’s FMAP percentage for 2011 from the 72.47 percent in place before the stimulus was enacted. In other words, if the bill as written becomes law, Louisiana’s FMAP percentage in 2011 would be 68.04 percent instead of dropping to 63.61.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost of Landrieu’s FMAP fix for Louisiana at $100 million for 2011, the only year it would likely apply.
But Landrieu’s office was not clear on where CBO came up with that score, and Levine said the fix as written would more likely provide Louisiana — and cost the federal treasury — between $200 million and $300 million.
In the meantime, the House health care reform bill, which was enacted 220-215 on Nov. 7, would extend the stimulus support for Medicaid another six months until the end of June 2011, at a cost of $20.5 billion in federal Medicaid costs. That provision, however, does not now exist in the Senate bill
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/11/sen_mary_landrieu_holds_off_on.html
‘Louisiana Purchase’ Landrieu Blames ABC Report of $100 Million Buyoff on ‘Very Partisan Republican Bloggers’
“I know that my time is up, but I would like to ask personal privilege for just one more minute to address an issue that has come up unfortunately in the last 24 hours by some very partisan Republican bloggers so I need to respond I think and will do so now,” Landrieu said. “One of the provisions in the framework of this bill that I’ve just decided to move on to debate has to do with fixing a very difficult situation that Louisiana is facing and any other state that might have a catastrophic disaster - let’s hope they don’t - like we did in 2005.”
Still, Landrieu elaborated on how federal aid in wake of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina disrupted the state’s economy and this $100 million was deserved.
Our state is still as poor as it was, if not poorer. I am not going to be defensive about asking for help in this situation and it is not a $100 million fix, it is a $300 million fix.”