Medicaid bill is moving through the legislature

Published: June 10, 2025

By:  Anna Puleo LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE–A proposal to expand Louisiana’s Medicaid coverage for mental health to include partial hospitalization services is moving forward in the Legislature, but only after lawmakers removed a key component to cut costs.

Senate Bill 96, authored by Sen. Patrick McMath, R-Covington, would require the Louisiana Department of Health to reimburse providers for partial hospitalization services–an outpatient level of psychiatric care–for adult and geriatric patients treated at licensed inpatient psychiatric hospitals.

An amendment by the House Health and Welfare Committee had earlier added more-intensive outpatient program services to the bill. That change raised the projected cost to $13.3 million in the first year.

Read more at KATC.