Postpartum Medicaid extension passes Mississippi House committee after years of debate

After greater than three years of debate over whether or not Mississippi ought to increase Medicaid protection for brand spanking new moms from 60 days to 12 months, a invoice to take action handed the Home Medicaid Committee in a matter of minutes Tuesday.

With the deadline to maneuver payments by way of committees approaching, Medicaid committee chair Rep. Joey Hood, R-Ackerman, known as the physique’s first assembly of the yr, rapidly promising that they’d not meet once more.

For the final two years, and once more this session, the Senate has handed payments to increase postpartum Medicaid protection, however below opposition from Home management, Hood’s committee by no means voted on them.

What it took to alter that, Hood mentioned, was a letter despatched Monday by Division of Medicaid Government Director Drew Snyder to Hood and Speaker of the Home Philip Gunn. The letter each endorsed extension and guaranteed the Republican officers that doing-so wouldn’t be the identical as increasing Medicaid. Gunn then instructed reporters that he wouldn’t stand in the best way of the extension invoice, which had already handed the Senate.

The letter got here in the future after Gov. Tate Reeves, who oversees the division, reversed course and endorsed extending protection.

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“I had been asking, and so had Speaker Gunn, had been asking about an opinion on postpartum protection,” Hood mentioned. “We acquired a letter from Drew Snyder yesterday. He mentioned it could be useful … He thought it was extension not growth.”

When the invoice was proposed by Rep. Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, she echoed a few of Reeves’ feedback that extension is especially obligatory within the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Ladies’s Well being Group determination, which led to abortion being virtually completely banned in Mississippi.

“This invoice demonstrates that we as coverage makers additionally acknowledge that our dedication to life can not finish as soon as the newborn takes his or her first breath, that we additionally should take care of that child and his mom outdoors the womb,” McGee mentioned.

One yr of Medicaid protection for brand spanking new moms has been allowed in Mississippi since 2020, when it was prolonged nationwide by way of federal COVID-19 aid. Nonetheless, that expires in April, leaving many states scrambling to enact their very own extensions. Mississippi and Wyoming are the one two states within the nation to have enacted neither a postpartum extension nor Medicaid growth, although each states are at present contemplating postpartum extension payments.

Some Democrats on the Medicaid committee questioned why it took the Dobbs determination and an election yr for Reeves and Gunn to again extension. Gunn just isn’t looking for reelection, however Reeves is prone to face Democrat Brandon Presley in November. Presley has been crucial of Reeves’ Medicaid positions, and the Northern District Public Service Commissioner helps full growth of Medicaid.

“Is not it a disgrace that we now have to attend till the political winds flip, when anyone seems like they don’t seem to be going to have the ability to be reelected, to do one thing like this,” Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville, mentioned. “It is a second that we must be celebrating the lives of ladies who truly convey life, however but it’s a political ploy on this course of. I am supporting this laws as a result of it is the correct factor to do, however I’m appalled that the management of this state has waited till their backs are towards the wall and they’re in bother earlier than they resolve to do the correct factor by taking good care of girls on this state.”

The invoice, which already handed the Senate 41-11, now heads to the complete Home. If it reaches the Home flooring and is authorised there with out modifications, it would head to the desk of Reeves, who has vowed to signal it. Whether or not it reaches the Home flooring will probably be as much as Hood, who mentioned after the listening to Tuesday that he doesn’t but know when that will probably be.

“I’ve no timetable. The main hurdle was getting it previous step one,” Hood mentioned.

In an interview Tuesday morning with SuperTalk Mississippi, Gunn mentioned that the invoice being allowed to succeed in a committee vote doesn’t essentially imply that it’ll attain the Home flooring.

“We have not determined to try this but. We have determined to maneuver the invoice out of the committee and maintain it alive. The deadline is at the moment by the best way, the deadline to maneuver payments out of the committee,” Gunn mentioned. “It means it goes to the calendar of the Home flooring and it sits on the calendar till it is taken up.”

Passage of postpartum extension could be a significant victory for Senate management, together with Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. Hosemann, who has been a vocal supporter of extension, is gearing as much as face state Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville, in a Republican major in August. McDaniel voted towards extension on the Senate flooring.