In recent months, enrollment in Louisiana’s Medicaid expansion has declined, as the state finally removed tens of thousands of ineligible individuals from the rolls. But according to researchers at LSU, enrollment in expansion will soon climb higher, with an estimated 41,575 individuals joining Medicaid expansion in 2019 alone. 

Those estimates came in a report the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH), using state and federal taxpayer dollars, commissioned from LSU. The circumstances surrounding this report raise concerns and questions in at least two areas. First, someone—it remains unclear whether from LDH, LSU or both—deleted important passages from the report during the editing process. And second, the report appears nowhere on LDH’s website.

Despite the Pelican Institute first requesting documents surrounding this enrollment study on June 10, LDH has yet to turn over a single document on the report. However, through a public records request of LSU, the Pelican Institute managed to obtain a version of the report from June 2019 and a version dated August 2019, which LSU presented as the final document. 

In many sections, August’s final enrollment report contains the same verbatim passages as the June version. However, the August version eliminated all discussion of projected Medicaid enrollment in future years. As a result, LSU removed major sections of the June version—three paragraphs of the executive summary, population projections on pages 11-13, and Medicaid enrollment projections on pages 14-20—from August’s final report.

With respect to Medicaid expansion, the June version of the report projects substantial enrollment increases. From a level of 470,567 in 2018, the LSU researchers project enrollment in Medicaid expansion to jump to 512,142 in 2019—an increase of 8.8% in one year alone—and climb slowly thereafter, reaching 515,721 in 2022.

Moreover, the June report acknowledges that expansion enrollment “can become substantially higher given that the ceiling” for enrollment “is over 571,000” by 2022—and even this “ceiling” for enrollment represents an under-estimate, the researchers admit. Because the researchers’ ceiling only includes individuals with income below the poverty level, but most individuals with income below 138% of the poverty level qualify for Medicaid expansion, enrollment could exceed even the 571,000 maximum outlined by the researchers.

Overall, the June report shows a dramatic growth in Medicaid dependence over the span of a decade. According to the LSU researchers, “by 2022, Medicaid enrollees will represent about 36% of the population, compared to 24% in 2012.”

The enrollment projections removed from August’s final version of the enrollment report raise serious questions, including:

  • How is LSU’s projected increase in Medicaid expansion for 2019 enrollment consistent with the eligibility checks LDH instituted earlier this year?
  • Why did the LSU researchers agree to release such a heavily redacted version of their work? Were there any political motivations in the decision?
  • Given that LSU presented its report as final, why has LDH declined to publish any version of the report on its website? Similarly, why has LDH declined to disclose any documents regarding this report in response to the Pelican Institute’s public records requests?
  • The contract governing the enrollment report specifically required LSU to draft “a report to LDH providing the projections of Medicaid recipients based on a prepared model for projecting Medicaid recipients by major categories.” Why did the Department of Health agree to spend a total of $71,120 of state and federal taxpayer dollars on an enrollment report—only to have that report fail to meet the Department’s stated objectives? Will officials within LDH repay taxpayers for the funds spent on a report that does not meet the Department’s own objectives?

The residents of Louisiana deserve the truth about Medicaid expansion. The mysterious circumstances surrounding this enrollment report—the deletions from the final report, LDH’s failure to post the report publicly and its failure to provide documents in response to the Pelican Institute’s records requests—should lead citizens and lawmakers to demand greater transparency and accountability from LDH. Taxpayers deserve to know exactly how their dollars are being spent.