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Health insurance cost hikes forecast Without extension, ACA premiums likely to soar for Louisiana residents
BY EMILY WOODRUFF Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By LESLIE WESTBROOK
Art teacher Ange Riehl works with junior Bronson Boudreaux on Nov. 4 at Southside High School in youngsville.
Southside High’s Ange Riehl recognized as Louisiana Art Educator of the year
BY JOEL THOMPSON Staff writer
During the week you’ll see her teaching art classes at Southside High School. On weekends you might find her at the downtown art walk selling homemade purses and jewelry. But last month Ange Riehl was in Lake Charles being named Louisiana Art Educator of the Year. It’s an honor that reflects 32 years of educating and instilling the passion of art into a generation of students. Riehl’s classes cover just about every medium of art you can imagine, from pencil work and acrylics to pottery wheels and watercolors. There isn’t a style that she herself doesn’t enjoy immensely. It’s been a long journey for Riehl since she started out making glass beads and jewelry when she was 14 years old. She began her teaching career at St. Martinville High School, before moving on to St. Thomas More where she spent 19 years. There she worked to build STM’s art program from scratch alongside her colleague Kim Thibodeaux. “It was a great family-oriented faculty,” she said. “We really worked
Victor McQuillen and his wife have relied on an Affordable Care Act marketplace plan for their health insurance for most of the past decade. This past year, it was a Blue Cross and Blue Shield silver policy that cost them about $300 a month. It saw them through health issues and the arrival of their newborn daughter. But when the 40-year-old freelance live audio engineer logged in to renew for 2026, the number on his screen made him stop cold. The plan he’d been paying $300 a month for was now listed at roughly $2,000 a month. “If you qualify for any ACA benefits, then there’s no way you can afford to spend $2,000 a month,” he said. “That’s really a joke. It’s not a real number. It might as well be $10,000.” For McQuillen and thousands of others across the state, those “not real” numbers are an early glimpse of what’s ahead if Congress allows the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits to lapse after 2025. The enhanced credits — beefed-up subsidies first created during the COVID-19 pandemic — helped drive marketplace enrollment to record highs and brought average premiums down to about $73 a month in Louisiana. The ACA’s premium tax credits lower the monthly cost of health insurance for people who buy coverage on the federal marketplace and have low or moderate incomes.
ä See INSURANCE, page 7A
FEMA head quits unexpectedly after six months BY MARK BALLARD and GABRIELA AOUN ANGUEIRA
Art teacher Ange Riehl works with senior Isaac Badeaux at Southside High School in youngsville. together to make an amazing art deShe has now spent the past eight partment there, and eventually we years at Southside High School in just kind of said, ‘We’ve done all we Youngsville, where she has worked can do here’ and decided to move on ä See ARTISTIC, page 7A to public school.”
Staff and Associated Press writers
SAN DIEGO — The acting chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency left his job Monday after just six months, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the latest disruption in a year of mass staff departures, program cuts and policy upheaval at the agency charged with managing federal disaster response. David Richardson is leaving the post after
ä See FEMA, page 4A
Rouses acquires 10 Winn-Dixie locations CEO says stores will be converted early next year BY STEPHANIE RIEGEL Staff writer
Rouses Markets is purchasing 10 Winn-Dixie locations in Louisiana and Mississippi from the Florida-based chain’s parent company, continuing its yearslong regional expansion and adding to its share of the local grocery market. Terms of the deal, announced on
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Monday, were not disclosed. But Rouses CEO Donny Rouse Jr. said the stores — including a location on Chef Menteur Highway in New Orleans East that is one of the few grocery stores in the underserved area — will be converted to Rouses Markets early next year. All Winn-Dixie employees who meet Rouses’ hiring criteria will be offered jobs. “It’s a big opportunity for us and will be great for the community,” Rouse said Monday by phone. In addition to the store on Chef Menteur Highway, locations that are part of the deal include two Jefferson Parish
stores (one in Kenner and one in Marrero), three on the northshore, and one each in Destrehan, Gramercy, Central and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. “Some locations will be new markets for us,” said Rouse, the third-generation CEO of the company founded by his grandfather in 1960. “Others are existing markets where we already do well and wanted to expand.” The deal comes two months after Robert Fresh Market, another local chain, acquired the century-old Lan-
STAFF PHOTO By DAVID GRUNFELD
The Winn-Dixie on Chef Menteur Highway in New Orleans East is one of 10 locations in the region acquired by ä See ROUSES, page 4A Rouses.
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