Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham was one of five state health officials that took a private plane trip provided by a Louisiana health care executive to meet with federal Medicaid regulators. (Photo by Julie O’Donoghue/LAI)
Five Louisiana Department of Health leaders took the private plane of a politically connected hospital owner to an out-of-state meeting with the federal health care regulators earlier this year. Those regulators control how much public money flows to health care facilities like the ones the hospital owner runs.
Rock Bordelon, a political donor who owns Allegiance Health Management in Bossier City, offered roundtrip flights on his personal aircraft and paid for “ground transportation” in the Washington D.C., area for Gov. Jeff Landry’s top health care officials Feb 5, according to disclosure forms the state officials completed.
State health care leaders who took Bordelon’s plane for the trip included Surgeon General Ralph Abraham, Health Secretary Michael Harrington, Deputy Health Secretary Peter Croughan, Health Undersecretary Drew Maranto and health department General Counsel Nicholas Gachassin.
The group went to the East Coast for discussions with the U.S. Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), records show. The federal agency has a significant say over how much hospitals, doctors and other health care providers in Louisiana get paid for treating patients in the Medicaid program.
“LDH staff encountered logistical challenges in booking commercial flights for executive team members, and were made aware that Mr. Bordelon had already planned a flight that could accommodate executive team members,” Kevin Litten, a health department spokesman, said Wednesday in a written statement.
“In the interest of full transparency, LDH filed appropriate affidavits with the Board of Ethics on a timely basis disclosing the travel that was provided,” Litten wrote.
The total cost of the health officials’ travel Bordelon provided was estimated to be $17,150, according to state disclosure forms.
Bordelon’s company runs 11 rural hospitals in Louisiana plus behavioral health centers, hospice care and other medical clinics. Rural health care facilities are typically more dependent on public funding from the state and federal government because they tend to exist in communities with a higher rate of low-income, uninsured and underinsured residents.
Bordelon has purchased eight of his 11 Louisiana hospitals since the start of 2016 and became a prolific political donor in the years since.
The health care executive has given a total of $291,000 to campaigns for Landry, Attorney General Liz Murrill, former Gov. John Bel Edwards and other state elected officials since 2018. His personal relationship with Donald Trump Jr. – the two have appeared on a hunting show Bordelon produces together – also makes him attractive to Republicans in office.
Bordelon and “numerous other hospital executives from other companies” attended the February meeting with the federal Medicaid regulators alongside state health care officials, Bordelon said.
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“Once again, the goal of all of us attending was to support LDH in its efforts to ensure access to quality care for Louisiana’s people,” he wrote in an email Monday.
In September, state health care officials agreed to nearly double Medicaid daily bed rates for acute care at seven hospitals, including four Bordelon owns. The higher rates are expected to cost the state and federal governments an additional $22 million in this fiscal year.
Louisiana officials can initiate such a rate hike but need approval from federal Medicaid officials before it can take effect. Bordelon and the health department said the higher rate payments for the seven hospitals weren’t discussed at the February meeting.
“The meeting between the LDH team and CMS in February 2024 was unrelated to rural hospital rates or reimbursement,” Litten said.
The health department did not answer questions about the purpose of the meeting or what the topics of conversation with federal officials were. In an email, Bordelon said the group talked about Medicaid rates paid to physicians affiliated with Louisiana hospitals. Those payments would affects his business and that of many other health care systems in the state.
A government ethics expert said public officials taking trips on private planes of people they regulate and fund is generally frowned upon — and illegal in some states.
“State officials (or other high ranking public officials) should not receive a financial benefit in their self interest which could be seen as a conflict of interest,” Ann Ravel, a former Federal Elections Commission chair who now teaches at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, said this week in an email response to questions.
Louisiana’s ethics laws contain a loophole when it comes to state officials accepting travel benefits from the industry they oversee however.
State law declares that no public employee shall accept “anything of economic value” from a person that “conducts operations or activities that are regulated by the public employee’s agency.”
But it also provides an exception that allows a public employee to accept “complimentary admission, lodging and reasonable transportation” if the accommodations are a “direct benefit to the agency” and a public disclosure form is submitted to the state ethics board.
Health officials traveling on health care providers’ private planes is rare, though not unprecedented, according to a review of disclosure forms from the state’s former top health care officials.
Dr. Rebekah Gee, Edwards’ first health secretary, took a flight on the Ochsner Health System plane to attend a groundbreaking at the LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport in October 2019.
Lobbyist Paul Rainwater also provided unspecified transportation worth $353 for Gee to meet with the Louisiana Rural Hospital Coalition leaders and to attend a press conference at Delta Community College in April 2019.
In 2023, Courtney Phillips, Edwards’ health secretary during his second term, accepted a $300 complimentary admission ticket from Ochsner Health to the Washington Mardi Gras ball. Ruth Johnson, Phillips’ health undersecretary, received the same $300 ticket from Ochsner that year.
In June, Harrington, Landry’s current health secretary, and Gachassin, the department’s general counsel, also flew from Baton Rouge to Monroe on “air transportation” provided by Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady, which runs the largest hospital in the state, for an estimated cost of $715 each. The travel was to “attend meetings at area hospitals with hospital management and staff,” according to a disclosure form.
In August, Harrington accepted $193 worth of transportation to Lafayette from Acadian Ambulance Service Inc. to discuss “Medicaid service delivery models.”
But state health officials, who have taken several trips to D.C. to talk about the Medicaid program over the years, don’t typically rely on health care executives to provide their travel to federal regulators.
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