02.16.12 Almost $1 billion in Medicaid money for Louisiana is on the table as congressional conferees Wednesday continued to hammer out an agreement on how to help pay for the extension of a payroll tax holiday. The money at stake is over and above what Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., thought she was getting to help her state when she won inclusion of the "FMAP fix" in the healthcare law that passed the Senate in 2009, a fix that brought Landrieu grief from opponents of the Affordable Care Act.

In fact, in a large dollop of Louisiana lagniappe, the state has already received $500 million more in the current fiscal year than it would have received had there not been an error in the drafting of the provision, the same error that has put the state on track to receive roughly $850 million more in Medicaid money in fiscal 2013 than it would have otherwise been entitled to.