Louisiana Voice

Item: Peoples Health is “TRANSITIONING” to UnitedHealthcare (UHC), the results of an acquisition which actually took effect on Jan. 1, 2024.

The merger—or purchase–leaves UnitedHealthcare the largest health insurance company in the U.S. and second-largest Medicare Advantage provider in the state, was done quietly and without fanfare.

But the takeover is a potential ominous development for Peoples Health’s 63,000 members in Louisiana. Despite a pledge that “nothing will change about Peoples Health,” UnitedHealthcare’s history says differently.

But the way medical procedures are approved is changing, as one recent telephone call revealed.

UnitedHealth Group denied 16.2 percent of all standard authorization requests in 2025, about 4.8 percent higher than the industry average.

Among Medicare Advantage plans, the average denial rate is about 17.4 percent so far this year. That’s versus a national Medicare Advantage denial rate of 8.9 percent. Fully 10 percent of urgent (expedited) requests are rejected by UnitedHealthcare. On appeals, about 34.4 percent are overturned.

A U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations REPORT in October 2024 indicated that the nation’s insurers, UnitedHealthcare included, have been using AI-POWERED TOOLS to deny some claims from Medicare Advantage plans holders. UnitedHealthcare’s AI model has a 90 PERCENT ERROR RATE, according to a lawsuit filed against the company. The lawsuit claims that the high error rate is not a bug in the system, but a feature of the UHC program.

A Peoples Health policy holder was recently contacted by telephone by a UnitedHealthcare representative who said referrals for treatment by most specialists must come from primary care physicians, effective Jan. 1.

Heretofore, Peoples Health has generally accepted claims from specialists without the necessity of primary care physician referrals. The exceptions are ophthalmologists and dentists.

Moreover, the primary care physician will be required to make such referrals through United HealthCare’s provider portal every six months.

In a classic repudiation of the “if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it” dictate, that will not only require more paperwork for the primary care provider, but it will also result in critical time delays for some procedures which will initially be denied, necessitating the appeal process.

And oh, don’t be surprised, too, if your premiums are increased in the near future.

By Paul Spillman

When Tom invited me to contribute to LouisianaVoice I told him the issue I was most passionate about at the time was the chaos of misunderstanding about what was happening in college athletics. In truth I am passionate about many things but I’ve assigned myself the one lane and plan to stick to it.

But I didn’t plan to contribute as often as I have. I also didn’t plan to write in the first person. But a summer unlike any I can remember in college athletics presented a need, or at least an opportunity, to address one issue after another. In doing so I tried to adopt a voice of editorial commentary with only an occasional personal opinion inserted, though I didn’t try to hide my honest take on current events. But a conversation with my son has prompted a purely personal submission.

I had considered doing something before the Clemson game on the top five games I’ve seen in Tiger Stadium. Actually, I was going to do six and leave number five blank out of respect to Jayden Daniels but then LSU started signing players granted a fifth year, including at least two who signed a free agent contract with an NFL team. This is part of the fallout from the federal judge who granted an injunction to qualifying athletes from the class of 2022 who never received a fifth year of eligibility. That particular ruling was overturned on appeal, but the most recent rulings have come in state courts not subject to the appeal of a federal court ruling.

With those signings, or intent to sign if it hasn’t actually happened as of this writing, LSU has become the official bad boy/bad girl of college sports. Three of the most prominent sports – football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, but excluding baseball – are led by coaches the rest of fandom loves to despise. But even as Will Wade adds another international player to the roster and a player who has signed NBA contracts it is Lane Kiffin and LSU football getting the bad press and heaps of scorn from everybody with a platform or a voice.

Kiffin’s defense is honest, logical, and relevant even if it doesn’t buy either him or the school any good will. Kiffin’s point is it’s not the fault of the players who have sued for a fifth year of eligibility that they were born in the one wrong year to receive five years of eligibility, the courts have determined they’re eligible for another year – in all sports – and they’ve entered the transfer portal. If LSU doesn’t recruit and sign them someone else will.

But Kiffin has all that baggage he’ll carry around until if or when he wins enough national championships to discard it. And LSU has become a poster university for “win no matter the cost” complete with cartoon governor hiring and firing. That image of both is almost universal among college sports fans. And that prompted me to ask my son a question during a recent phone conversation and both our responses prompted me to write this.

My son and his family live out of state but we talk and text and send photos often. As the college football season has neared he is transitioning from soccer (my grandson plays almost year around) back to football, specifically LSU football. He shares my love for the Tigers and we’ve talked a good bit of football in the last few conversations. In the most recent the subject of signing guys who have been cut from NFL pre-season rosters came up and I asked him as it occurred to me, “If Kiffin was doing all these same things but still at Ole Miss would you feel the same way about it?”

Silence on the other end of the phone. It didn’t really surprise me and it gave me a moment to answer that question for myself. We both came up with “No.” If Kiffin was doing all this at Ole Miss I’d be calling him out for it.

And so I find myself having to criticize the one thing I am most dependent on to escape everything else that’s going on in the world – LSU football. LSU is doing what it has to in the modern world to stay on top and I respect that, even support it in general. But I don’t like any of the things that come with it in 2026. And I don’t like much of what college athletics has become because the NCAA is just useless. Nor do I like Congress having to step in because the NCAA is just useless. Congress as it exists today is a very blunt instrument and all it can accomplish is to bludgeon you into submission.

I don’t like losing 25% of every signing class to the transfer portal but I do think players should be allowed to transfer just like any other student. I agree players should share in the profits. I don’t like talking about how much the current roster cost or how it compares to other schools. I think the NCAA screwed the class of 2022 but I am not a fan of bringing back players that signed professional contracts.

And, to be honest, I am not a fan of Lane Kiffin being the face of all this for LSU. I respect Kiffin as a coach, even more so now that he’s our coach and I’ve seen him more up close and in more detail than I previously knew. But there’s a ton of baggage I could do without and every controversial issue adds more whether it’s justified or not. I could do a whole lot without that as the face of my Tigers.

But what’s a guy to do? I’m not the governor and if I was I wouldn’t be hiring and firing administrators and coaches anyway. I thought Scott Woodward was an excellent Athletic Director and if it was up to me I’d bring him back. He did hire Brian Kelly and that didn’t work out, but he also hired Kim Mulkey, Jay Johnson, and Jay Clark, all of whom won national championships for LSU. But his refusal to bring back Will Wade and the pettiness of Landry and his boy Lee Mallet cost Woodward his job.

So all I can do is watch. Watch the governor interfere, watch the hand-picked hires, watch the sport spiral into chaos as the NCAA slowly dies, watch a team I can hardly name any players on, watch a coach I have mixed feelings about, and hope. Hope the games get here without any more distractions, incidents, or issues. Hope for an undefeated September. Hope for good games to enjoy. Hope for a season to distract me from the looming uncertainty of the midterms. Hope for my Tigers to win a championship. Hope for something to feel good about. And sometimes I get to write about all of it. I just wish I felt better about some of the things I write about.

The list of famous musicians who have lived or plied their trade in Louisiana who have since departed is long and illustrious.

There are Hank Williams, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash who were regulars on the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport before hitting it big.

There was Janis Joplin who called the honky tonks and road houses in South Louisiana her second home while establishing her musical chops.

Percy Sledge who had wanted to play second base for the Cincinnati Reds, moved to Baton Rouge after recording When a Man Loves a Woman (recorded while wearing his baseball uniform), a song that became a megahit not once, but twice.

More recently, Jimmy Buffett who died almost exactly three years ago on Sept. 1, 2023, began his musical career as a busker, singing on the streets of New Orleans for whatever tourists were willing to cough up.

Almost a year after Buffett’s death, Kris Kristofferson, who wrote Me and Bobby McGee while flying helicopters for PHI out o Lafayette, died on Sept. 28, 2024. He actually landed a rented helicopter on Johnny Cash’s Tennessee estate in order to pitch songs he’d written. Cash was so impressed that he debuted Sunday Morning Comin’ Down on his ABC Network TV show, launching Kristofferson’s career.

And, of course, there was a host of New Orleans performers and songwriters who made our lives happier with their music.

Fats Domino, Tony Joe White, John Fred, Rod Bernard, Johnny Horton, Jim Reeves, Percy Mayfield, even Ray Charles…

Sadly, they’re all gone.

And now, country music icon Dolly Parton has joined them in death.

It was little known until she mentioned it in her 2020 book, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, that when she a mere child of 12 (or 13—different stories give varying ages), she rode 30 hours on a bus with her doddering grandmother so she could record her very FIRST RECORD, Puppy Love, at GOLDBAND RECORDS, a small studio owned by Edward Wayne Shuler, Sr. and which also gave the world Phil Phillips’s Sea of Love.

Lake Charles TV station KPLC posted a story about Dolly, complete with a PHOTO in which, even as a child, she displayed that incredible Dolly smile.

Dolly died today (Aug. 25) at age 80. But she was so much more than a singer. She was an actress, an entrepreneur but most of all, a true philanthropist who set up her Dollywood Foundation and the Imagine Library as a means of offering scholarships, books and disaster relief to children.

Whenever I talk about my book Louisiana Rocks: The True Origins of Rock and Roll, I like to say Louisiana is known for its great food, colorful politics and damned good music. Writing about just this small sampling of the state’s 300 or so of the state’s outstanding musical artists only serves to underscore the richness and depth of that talent.

Elayne Hung Correctional Center (EHCC) has a history of violence and unexplained deaths but now an irate grandmother who just happens to know more than a little about the Louisiana political structure, has entered into the discussion after her mentally ill grandson was brutally beaten at the facility last June.

Thus far in 2026, there have been 14 reported inmate deaths at EHCC. In 2025, there were 47 with 18 of those classified as unexpected. The year before, 2024, 45 inmates died at the facility.

On June 18, Shane Travis, described by his grandmother, Annette Sharp of Amite as suffering from mental illness, was attacked and beaten. He had been incarcerated at Hunt since November 2025, primarily, according to Sharp, because even as Republicans were attributing mass shootings not to guns but to mental illness, former Gov. Bobby Jindal was closing mental health treatment centers during his term in office.

Sharp described herself as “emotionally distraught” after reviewing an itemized accounting from Healthy Blue Member Verification of Services for her grandson that showed treatments exceeding $16,000 for injuries to his pelvic and chest areas, his eye socket, ear, jaw, head, brain and lumbar, thoracic and cervical spine.

“As a grandparent, if my grandchild is in danger, I would remove them from the situation and keep them in a safe place,” she wrote in a letter to Hunt Warden Travis Day Warden and Secretary of Public Safety and Corrections Gary Westcott. “I am unable to do that now. I no longer can provide or attempt to provide those safeguards. The ‘powers to be’ in the correctional facility ae supposed to do that. When the aggressor is inside the institution that is supposed to take care of my grandchild, I cannot control that.”

She then asked question which were not necessarily rhetorical: “When Shane was severely injured, where were the employees that were supposed to protect him? How long was it before Shane received medical attention? I have no information on the timeline of when Shane was beaten and time he was seen at Our Lady of the Lake (OLOL) Hospital in Baton Rouge.

“Did Elayn Hunt Correctional Center document everything by taking photos, videos of Shane’s injuries, or the scene where the beating took place? Did Elayn Hunt Correctional Center note the date, time, location and any witnesses? Did Elayne Hunt Correctional Center keep a written record of what happened, including any statements from the aggressor or bystanders?

“Did Elayn Hunt Correctional Center notify the person’s next of kin? Does Elayn Hunt Correctional Center even collect that information? Does Elayn Hunt Correctional Center advise family of any follow-up? Does Elayn Hunt Correctional Center even care who the next of kin are to notify when you eventually kill Shane?

“Seeking legal advice is a clear next step. If Shane were 17, we could call child Protective Services. But he made his 25^th birthday two days after his horrific beating,” she wrote.

“What kind of animal could beat a human being this badly and what was the motivating factor? I want to know who the person or persons were who did this to Shane. What repercussions did those animals receive for this horrible abuse to a mentally ill individual?”

Sharp attached a copy of the services provided by OLOL thus far. “Play close attention to services 10-17 that enumerate X-rays and CT scans of his pelvis, chest, face, eye socket, ear, jaw, head and brain, lumbar spine, thoracic spine and cervical spine. Again, what type of animal would beat another human being in this fashion and where the hell were the employees on this unit. I will be sending all medical bills to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center.

“Did Elayn Hunt Correctional Center provide care after the emergency room visit and if so, where? Did you bring him back to the facility where he was beaten to a pulp? Where did nt receive follow-up care and for how long? Did you have him moved to East Feliciana Mental Hospital before he was recovered from this beating. What was the timeline between the beating, medical treatment, recovery and going to East Feliciana Mental Hospital?”

She added that she was “fighting another battle with incompetent mental health facilities on their dereliction of duties and responsibilities in keeping Shand and us safe. Thanks to former Gov. Bobby Jindal, there are NO mental health facilities in this state for our loved ones to exist safely. And those of us who have been trying to take care of our mentally ill relatives receive zero help and lots of roadblocks.”

It was a long time coming but it finally happened.

What the Repugnantcans in Congress have been too scared to do, Doug Ford has done.

And it had a beautiful ring to it.

Ford, the Ontario premier, reacting to Trump’s insane obsession with tariffs, said in a press conference, “I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he (Trump) has a lot of room to kiss my ass.”

I second that emotion.

Repugnantcans as a group and you can throw in the Supreme Court, are complicit in their cowardice in sitting back and allowing Cadet Bone Spurs to run amok like some spoiled brat in a day care who wants every toy for himself.

But as the back and forth between the administrations of the U.S. and Canada reached what appears to be an impasse on the scale of the Strait of Hormuz, it was Ford who stepped forward and told Trump what he has needed to hear for half-a-century: “Kiss my ass.”

A trade war between the two countries hurts both but Ford said Canadians would prefer suffering economic turmoil to giving in to Trump.

Well, for the information of those in Congress who are not paying attention, the U.S. is already suffering economic turmoil with higher fuel costs, higher utilities costs, higher grocery costs and higher housing costs. Yet our own Congress on the Repugnantcan side of the aisle, remains mute even as the U.S. is being devoured by inflation and stagnant wages.

To fully understand the depth of TACO Don’s mental instability, consider how hos his energy is being devoted to such monumental affairs of state as new grass, the Kennedy Center, the Reflecting Pool, building a new helipad, an archway and an underground bunker (when the White House already has one), renaming the Gulf of Mexico and now expressing a desire to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.”

Trump Threatens to Rename Lake Ontario as He Spirals Over Canada Feud | The New Republic

Good God. We’re being jerked around by the bawling, petulant child kicking the back of our seat on a 20-hour international flight. And fully a third of Americans, including people like Mike Johnson, John N. Kennedy and others, think that’s just fine.

And let’s never forget that POTUS (Pedophile of the United States), who said he would not engage us in a forever war, has done just that by choosing to attack Iran without authorization from a weak Repugnantcan-majority Congress.

It’s long past the time we should all stand with Doug Ford and tell Trump, Kennedy, Johnson, Stephen Miller and rest of the sycophants to kiss our collective asses.