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This article from NYTimes.com
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Top Bush Adviser on Medicare Says He'll Return to Louisiana
February 14, 2003
By ROBIN TONER
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 - Bobby Jindal, a central figure on
Medicare policy in the Bush administration, announced today
that he was resigning to return home to Louisiana. He is a
potential Republican candidate for governor there this
year.
Mr. Jindal, 31, was praised by Health and Human Services
Secretary Tommy G. Thompson for "helping create a Medicare
reform program that not only addresses the challenges
facing the program, but one that Congress could pass." Mr.
Jindal is the assistant secretary for planning and
evaluation.
The administration's Medicare plan has yet to be formally
revealed, and early reports of it drew immediate fire on
Capitol Hill. Lawmakers in both parties said any effort to
require the elderly to accept a managed care plan as a
condition for receiving drug benefits, as contemplated in a
draft circulated last month, was doomed on Capitol Hill.
Administration officials have said they are still
consulting with Congress over the shape of the plan.
Mr. Jindal declined to address the Medicare plan in an
interview today, but said: "My contribution is finished. It
now enters a different phase of work." He added, "I would
not link the timing of my departure to anything going on in
the administration or in health policy."
Mr. Jindal said he was going home because he wanted to
raise his 13-month-old daughter in Louisiana, because he
and his wife had "never made the transition to permanent
status here," and because he wanted to explore other
options, including the race for governor.
Gov. Mike Foster of Louisiana, a Republican, is coming to
the end of his second term and cannot run again. The open
seat has already drawn a crowded field of almost a dozen
contenders, who under Louisiana's idiosyncratic election
law must all run in an open primary on Oct. 4. If no one
receives more than 50 percent of the vote, the likely
outcome with so many candidates, the top two vote-getters
go on to a runoff.
Jason Hebert, executive director of the Louisiana
Republican Party, said that in a field this crowded, "it's
really anybody's race."
Scott Arceneaux, executive director of the Louisiana
Democratic Party, said Mr. Jindal "certainly has a very
good reputation, but not in the rough-and-tumble world of
Louisiana politics." He added, "It's definitely a different
arena than administrative government work."
Mr. Jindal, in fact, has a reputation as something of a
policy whiz kid. A graduate of Brown and Oxford, he was
appointed secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health
and Hospitals at age 24 by Governor Foster and is still
considered a favorite of his.
Two years later, he was made executive director of the
National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare,
the Clinton-era panel that was unable to reach a consensus
on overhauling Medicare. He has also served as president of
the University of Louisiana system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/14/politics/14RESI.html?ex=1046260865&ei=1&en=df7d592acf1d4551
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