01.17.12 The first phase of the rollout of a new “Bayou Health” privatized system for providing health care to the state’s poor and uninsured is running into startup difficulties.

Roughly 12 percent of eligible Medicaid recipients have enrolled with one of five private health plans scheduled to take over their care in February. Beginning Monday, the Jindal administration will start assigning the remaining quarter-million unsigned participants to one of the private companies.

Also doctors, hospitals and other health-care providers have raised so many questions about how the new privatized program works that the state Department of Health and Hospitals, called DHH, started holding daily conference calls to try to clear the air.

 

Read the full story at The Advocate.