BATON ROUGE – The Dept. of Health is scrambling to adjust to the unexpected loss of $859 million in Medicaid funds for health serves for the poor and uninsured.

The cuts were unmentioned in press releases from Congress hailing passage of a transportation funding bill - a bill balance in part by Medicaid cuts.

The state’s fiscal year began Sunday, July 1.

On the chopping block:

Programs that care for women with breast and cervical cancer, provide hospice care and offer adult dentures to the poor and uninsured.

Funding to the LSU public hospitals and rural hospitals;

Rates paid to the doctors, clinics and other health providers who care for Medicaid patients. would be slashed up to 10 percent.

The reduction in funding came when the House reversed an earlier error and dropped the federal matching Medicaid rate for the state.

The state, with budget problems of its own, did not have the extra money needed to produce all the federal dollars in the current year budget, creating the drop of about 10 percent.