Mississippi
Helping Mississippi’s Working Poor Get Healthcare is Economic Development in Action
- Columnist Sid Salter says the Mississippi Legislature should finish the job and expand Medicaid.
In recent decades, Mississippi has defied the odds in economic development. Landing first Nissan and then Toyota automobile manufacturing plants, Steel Dynamics and Aluminum Dynamics flat-roll operations, and recently Amazon Web Services in Madison County and EVE Energy battery plant in Marshall County, Mississippi is, as Gov. Tate Reeves often repeats, “open for business.”
Those job victories are in addition to the $8.8 billion in agricultural production value led by Mississippi’s poultry and timber industries.
To keep Mississippi “open for business” it is incumbent on our state’s leadership to make sure current and future employers can invest in our state with a reasonable assurance of quality public schools, a well-maintained system of transportation infrastructure, green spaces and amenities that offer a reliably good quality of life, and an accessible, affordable and effective healthcare system.
Mississippi is finally taking steps toward reclaiming a portion of the federal tax dollars Mississippians have been paying to provide public healthcare for the working poor in 40 other states but not in our state where healthcare disparities are achingly real and politically inarguable.
The Mississippi House of Representatives has by a margin of 98 to 20 passed legislation that would expand Medicaid benefits to individuals aged 19 to 64 who earn no more than 138% of the federal poverty level. The bill contains a work requirement – which the feds are likely to disapprove – but even so, the bill would expand Medicaid coverage in Mississippi for four years before a legislative repealer kicks in.
The bill now awaits the action of the Mississippi State Senate, where Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has been a champion of providing healthcare for Mississippi’s working poor along the general lines of the House proposal. If the Legislature can agree on a plan, that plan would then go to Reeves’ desk for his signature, veto, or decision to allow the bill to become law without his signature.
Opponents of any form of Medicaid expansion in Mississippi and the other 10 states across the country that have not expanded coverage make three primary arguments – the state can’t afford the state share of the costs, expanding Medicaid will discourage finding work, and states should not increase enrollment in a “broken program.”
But a scholarly article from the Journal of American Medicine in 2020 entitled “The Benefits of Medicaid Expansion” argues that Medicaid expansion impacts the state’s economy in three tangible ways: “1) Helps low-income families’ health and financial well-being, especially those in which someone has lost a job; 2) Expanding Medicaid reduces hospitals’ uncompensated care…uninsured patients will still be cared for, as hospitals on the front line have demonstrated every day throughout the coronavirus pandemic; and 3) Medicaid expansion creates or protects jobs.”
The academic study, first published in 2019 by the National Bureau of Economic Research, was written by University of Michigan scholars Thomas C. Buchmueller and Helen G. Levy, and Betsy Q. Cliff of the School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago.
The trio of scholars found: “Comparing trends in states that implemented the Medicaid expansion to those that did not, we find that the ACA Medicaid expansion substantially increased insurance coverage and improved access to health care among unemployed workers. We then test whether this strengthening of the safety net affected transitions from unemployment to employment or out of the labor force. We find no meaningful statistical evidence in support of moral hazard effects that reduce job finding or labor force attachment.”
The House version takes advantage of the fiscal realities of expanding Medicaid with a work requirement. The repealer gives state government a chance to review and assess the program after four years. And it provides a revenue source for Mississippi’s beleaguered rural hospitals.
Let me repeat this because it bears repeating. Mississippians who pay federal taxes are already paying for expanded Medicaid that benefits the working poor in other states. They were paying for it under Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden. The catch is, that none of your fellow Mississippians who are working but can’t afford health insurance can access that care.
The Mississippi Legislature should finish the job and change that irrational fact. Working poor Mississippians deserve the same medical care available to 80 percent of their American cousins.
JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – The spotlight was on the Magnolia state top up-and-coming innovators at the Innovate MS Accelerate Conference.
Eight finalists were selected to pitch their company’s idea in hopes of landing a deal from investors.
Innovate Mississippi’s CEO said, “This pitch day is really the culmination of something that started with eight regional partners. We had 240 applications that then turned into about 120 pitches. Those pitch competitions awarded up more than $100,000 of prizes at the pitch. But now of that Group, eight of them have been selected. They’ve been working their butts off for the last 12 weeks.”
One of the presenters started his company just this past summer. He is blending medical care with artificial intelligence.
Brandon Newton, founder and CEO of Gen Med Labs, said, “My background is mostly like chemistry and medicine, and I’ve recently started studying computer engineering. I have passion for both medicine and technology, so I wanted to create a company that leverages both of those skill sets in order to basically aid the medical industry as a whole.”
Gen Med Labs is working on a pair of ordinary glasses that function as a portable computer.
So, when the user puts them on, it’s a type of virtual reality. The other presenting all had something different to bring to the table.
“Well, that’s kind of the front of this is we don’t focus in any one industry. So we have, you know, a company that can allow you to do food delivery where you sort by price or time. We have a company that does videos. For homes, we have companies that help with, you know, getting away from that annoying clipboard when you go to the doctor’s office. They’re companies doing all sorts of different things,” Jeff said.
The conference will continue on Wednesday, where interested investors can meet with innovators to discuss how involved they want to be in advancing their companies.
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President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement to nominate former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general has, again, thrust Mississippi Congressman Michael Guest, chairman of the House Ethics Committee, into the national spotlight.
Guest’s committee will potentially vote at its Wednesday meeting whether to release an ethics report on Gaetz. The committee, which was investigating Florida’s Gaetz over allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, was set to release the report before Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress.
Guest is a Republican who represents Mississippi’s 3rd Congressional District and has chaired the bipartisan House committee that investigates whether House members have committed ethics violations since January 2023.
Gaetz resigned last week shortly after Trump announced he planned to nominate him to lead the Department of Justice, despite having been previously investigated by the department for alleged sex trafficking crimes. The department declined to pursue criminal charges against Gaetz.
After the resignation, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that he does not want the House to make the committee’s report public because Gaetz is no longer in office.
Guest declined to comment to Mississippi Today about recent developments with the committee’s investigation into Gaetz. But the Mississippi Republican told Politico that the panel will make its own decision about releasing the report, regardless of Johnson’s opinion that it should be kept under wraps. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for the report to be provided to senators before a confirmation vote on Gaetz and-or to the public.
Guest is the former district attorney of Rankin and Madison counties. He also gained national attention when he introduced a resolution last year to expel New York Congressman George Santos from the House.
Some U.S. senators such as Republican John Cornyn of Texas have publicly called for the Ethics Committee to hand over its report of the Gaetz investigation. Neither of Mississippi’s two U.S. senators, Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, but they will get to vote on the nomination if it reaches the full Senate.
Wicker, a Republican from Tupelo, told Mississippi Today that the Senate has the constitutional obligation to “provide the president with advice and consent on executive and judicial branch nominations” and he takes that responsibility seriously. He did not comment on Gaetz.
“I think that we are in a position to give President-elect Trump good advice on what is likely to work,” Wicker said. We are going to fulfill our constitutional role, and we are going to do so as friends of the president-elect and as members of a team who want him to be as successful as possible.”
Hyde-Smith, a Republican from Brookhaven, did not respond to a request for comment.
State decline in election figures mirrors preliminary national voter turnout
Voter turnout in this year’s election came out higher than early vote counters predicted, but still far lower than in some of the previous presidential elections over the last 20 years.
The trend also seems to follow a national decline in voter turnout, though, national numbers are still being tallied up and finalized as of Monday.
According to finalized reporting by the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office, 1,225,176 people voted by or on Nov. 5 in the presidential, congressional, state and special elections. That figure represented about 62% of the state’s electorate, or the total number of eligible voters.
Compared to previous years, it’s a bit of a drop.
“While we were hopeful to see our voters rise to the occasion, it has become apparent we continue to face voter apathy and fatigue,” Secretary of State Michael Watson said in a press release issued last week before the count was finalized. “I encourage each of you to continue to encourage your family, friends, and neighbors to engage in the elections process and fulfill civic duty and responsibility. Mississippi needs an engaged electorate now more than ever.”
In 2020, 66% of the state’s electorate cast a ballot in the election. In 2016, 2012 and 2008, it was 64%, 67% and 68%, respectively, according to the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office.
In respect to the nation, as of Friday afternoon about 149 million ballots were cast across all 50 states, which is still about 7 million than what was seen in the 2020 election.
Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office Communications Director Elizabeth Jonson said that voter turnouts were actually pretty high during the early hours of Election Day, but overall, they just didn’t exceed previous years’ numbers.
As for Mississippi, there are still two elections left undecided: The Mississippi Supreme Court Central District race and the Mississippi Court of Appeals race. Candidates in those races are heading to a runoff on Nov. 26, just two days before Thanksgiving.
Grant McLaughlin covers the Legislature state government for the Clarion Ledger. He can be reached at gmclaughlin@gannett.com or 972-571-2335.
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