Multiple news outlets blasted Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for his most recent repetition of the fact he will not accept the federal Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid assistance.
Contrary to other Republican state governors, Jindal said he will not reconsider his stance due to the high cost he said the Louisiana budget cannot handle.
Opposition to Jindal’s decision has been much louder than support, including a scathing letter from the editorial board of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
The Times-Picayune said Jindal’s move shows he continues to put his partisan politics before the needs of his Louisiana residents.
The editorial staff pointed out Jindal’s background in healthcare, noting his connections stretch as far back as his thesis while studying at Oxford concerning a needs-based approach to healthcare.
MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry accused Jindal of “not giving a damn” about his constituents in an open letter Saturday, following the lead of The Times-Picayune’s open letter posted Friday that said Jindal is “ignoring his people.”
Harris-Perry backed up her comments with numbers: 21.6 percent of citizens in Louisiana live below the poverty line, 20 percent of those lack health insurance and more than 68 percent of those receiving Medicaid assistance in Louisiana are children.
She called for Jindal to “pull a Palin” and move on, and presented her idea for a new Twitter hashtag about Louisiana citizens’ feelings: “fbj” for Forget Bobby Jindal.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu sent an open letter to Jindal urging him to accept federal assistance.
In July, Jindal faced similar backlash from his decision, but it is more widespread this time around.
In a phone interview with The Huffington Post on Tuesday, in reference to the healthcare plan, Jindal called for President Barack Obama to work with governors and “change the partisan tone in Washington,” as Obama promised.
Jindal defended his position Friday in an open letter from Bruce Greenstein, secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals, to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, saying the law “has severe legal problems, is bad policy and is unworkable.”
He said it would be impossible to have a working system in place by October 2013, the projected date called for by the Affordable Care Act.
The deadline for Louisiana to accept the offer for Medicaid expansion is next year.
In addition to her criticism of Jindal’s healthcare policy, Harris-Perry also called him out for the educational voucher program giving state money to schools that teach creationism.
She cited the Interfaith Alliance when she said Jindal has an inability “to distinguish between religious indoctrination and basic public education.”
