Showing posts with label Brady Bunch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brady Bunch. Show all posts

Friday, May 02, 2014

And you thought Obamacare was dumb


Because "inefficiency."

Because "bloated state government."

Because budget.

Because privatization.

Because because because because all these things, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal -- who's so smart he wants to run your country . . . because he's done such a bang-up job in his state -- decided to strap the jet engine of free enterprise to a creaky charity hospital system and let "privatization" do that voodoo that it do for the benefit of his cronies of poor people and taxpayers alike.

Eight . . . seven . . . ignition sequence started . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . we have . . . uh . . . this story from The Associated Press.
Federal officials on Friday (May 2) rejected financing plans by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration on deals to privatize six state-run hospitals, a decision that threatens contracts that already have been used to turn over hospital management.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, notified the state health department that it refused to sign off on the plans. The agency said the agreements don't meet federal guidelines governing how Medicaid dollars can be spent.
"To maintain the fiscal integrity of the Medicaid program, CMS is unable to approve the state plan amendment request made by Louisiana," the federal agency said in a statement. "We look forward to continuing to work with the state to ensure Louisianans receive high quality Medicaid coverage."

The decision was a significant blow to the Jindal administration and could create massive upheaval in the state's budget. The budget was balanced this year assuming that hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding would flow into the hospitals.
Jindal didn't wait for federal approval before he shifted management, so the hospitals are now operating under financing plans that have been rejected.

The rejections involved plans for LSU-run hospitals in New Orleans, Lafayette, Houma, Lake Charles, Shreveport and Monroe.

Privatization deals for the New Orleans, Lafayette and Houma hospitals took effect in June, and the Shreveport and Monroe facilities have been under outside management since October. The Lake Charles hospital was closed, its services shifted to a nearby private hospital.
It wasn't immediately clear how the Jindal administration would respond. CMS gave the state health department 60 days to file an appeal of its decision.
THE ABOVE dramatization of the 1995 Darwin Awards winner's crowing achievement, as it turns out, is a depiction of an urban legend from Arizona that fooled everybody, including the Darwin judges. That just will make it all the awesomer when Mike and Carol's bastard son "Bobby" finally does it, not with a '67 Impala, but with an entire freakin' STATE!

That crater in the side of Tejas is gonna be absoeffinlutely epic!

Tuesday, April 01, 2014

Bobby, Bobby, Bobby!


Here's the story of a governor named Bobby, who says he's thinking about being more than that.

In an admission that surprised absolutely no one, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told a reporter for a Heritage Foundation "news service" that he might run for Barack Obama's job in 2016.

"It's something we're thinking about. It's something we'll pray about. But...we have to win the war of ideas first," Jindal said last week. "We've got to win the elections in 2014. And after we do that, we're certainly giving it some thought."

Insert GOP boilerplate about Obamacare here.

Insert Jindal boilerplate about his miracle-working in Louisiana here.


Now, with the possibility of a President Jindal come January 2017, I think it might be useful to explore the genesis of some of the governor's "reform agenda" in the Pelican State. Here it's important to explain how an Indian-American kid named Piyush became a Southern governor named Bobby.

IT ALL comes down to The Brady Bunch.

"Every day after school, I'd come home and I'd watch 'The Brady Bunch.'" Jindal told 60 Minutes' Morley Safer in 2009. "And I identified with Bobby, you know? He was about my age, and Bobby stuck."

Well, that explains a lot. It may even explain his Louisiana "reform" agenda, where wackiness has ensued much of the time. Indeed, if we closely examine one of the earliest and most profound influences on young Piyush/Bobby, we can see the genesis of key elements of his "miracle" on the bayou.

First, let's see whether we can unearth his inspiration for entering the political arena:



THAT DONE, it shouldn't be difficult to come up with the blueprint for his voucher-driven "education reform" program. It's all a matter of a) salesmanship and b) free customer service:



GROOVY! Now, I think I have an idea concerning the inspiration for Jindal's brilliant plan to bring transparency and more "effective" ethics enforcement to the notoriously corrupt Louisiana state government:



THAT'S RIGHT . . . behind every brilliant political scheme, there's a pop-culture inspiration. Yes, there is.

Now, let's move on to the genesis of Jindal's reform of Medicaid and the state's charity health-care system:



FINALLY, how in the world do you sell yourself as someone of presidential timbre when your entire body of work as governor of a poor, small and crooked Southern state has left it just as poor, just as small and just as crooked as you found it? And then there's the whole "I destroyed Louisiana higher education" thing.

But then you go back to the well one more time.  

What would the Bradys do?"



YEAH . . . that's the (2016) ticket.