Medicaid cuts could cut access to care for many Louisiana Native Americans

Published: March 25, 2026

By: Dakota Laszlo, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — New Medicaid rules requiring recipients to work and reverify coverage every six months will disproportionately affect the 85% of Native Americans living in Louisiana, tribal leaders and Indigenous experts say.

While the 4,000 Native Americans belonging to four tribes officially recognized by the federal government under longstanding covenants are not affected by the new Medicaid rules, roughly 24,000 members of 11 state-recognized tribes will be subject to the new regulations.

“Instead of investing the time and the energy to think of more efficient and impactful ways to create the infrastructure around the problem, the common decision has just been to run away from the problem,” said Devon Parfait, chief of the state-recognized Grand Caillou Dulac tribe.

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