Medicaid expansion discussions return as Mississippi hospitals face financial struggles

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – Extra Mississippi organizations have come out in favor of Medicaid growth in current months. However state leaders haven’t proven any curiosity in altering course.

Nonetheless, it’s a part of conversations on the way to hold hospitals up and working.

It’s not a brand new rationalization about why the Mississippi Hospital Affiliation believes Medicaid growth is required for the healthcare system to thrive.

“The problem is solely the income,” described Richard Roberson, Mississippi Hospital Affiliation Normal Counsel and Vice President of Coverage and State Advocacy. “And once you’ve bought 10 to fifteen % of your sufferers on common throughout the business, exhibiting up with no capability to pay that ultimately wears you down and also you simply you don’t have the useful resource to proceed.”

However what’s new? The dearth of growth is among the many causes listed by Singing River Hospital about challenges they’re dealing with and why they’re trying to be put up on the market. Within the Delta, Greenwood-LeFlore hospital is trying to merge into a big heath system to be able to survive. Their CEO resigning Friday. MHA’s Richard Roberson defined that for a lot of techniques it’s been a sluggish course of of economic losses that accumulate over time.

“The place do you discover extra income to assist cowl these prices?” Roberson requested. “It was already unhealthy earlier than COVID. A number of the financing that they have been capable of get from the federal authorities and from the state did assist bridge a few of that in the course of the pandemic. However now we’re, we’re sort of pivoting to a post-pandemic world. And all these challenges are again, and the price of even going up increased than they have been two years in the past. In order that’s, that’s creating only a actually, actually troublesome state of affairs for the hospitals.”

The hospital affiliation is hoping state leaders might be extra keen to contemplate choices transferring ahead.

“It simply begs the query as to why aren’t we doing this?” requested Roberson. “It’s no completely different than asking for federal help after a catastrophe. We requested for federal help for quite a lot of issues. That is an possibility that the federal authorities has made obtainable to the state of Mississippi and sadly, you realize, our taxpayer {dollars} ought to go into.”

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