Mississippi Today
House passes bill to allow pregnant women more timely care under Medicaid
House Bill 539, introducing presumptive eligibility for pregnant women, passed the full House 117-5 on Wednesday and now advances to the Senate.
The bill, authored by House Medicaid Committee Chairwoman Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, allows pregnant women whose net family income is 194% or less of the federal poverty level to be presumed eligible for Medicaid. They could receive medical services before their Medicaid application is officially approved by the Mississippi division of Medicaid.
For an individual, an income up to 194% of the federal poverty level would be an income up to about $29,000 a year.
The bill does not introduce an additional eligibility category or expand coverage, McGee explained. Rather, it simply allows pregnant women eligible for Medicaid to get into a doctor's office earlier.
“So, what the bill proposes,” McGee said, “is that a qualified provider – whether that be (from) the health department, (a Federally Qualified Health Center) or a doctor's office, who has been trained and approved through Medicaid – would have the ability to presumptively designate a woman eligible for Medicaid when she presents pregnant and presents proof of income … and therefore allow her to get into the doctor's office early while the division of Medicaid is making that final and official determination that she is eligible.”
Presumptive eligibility would cost the state roughly $560,000, McGee said, compared to the $1 million it can cost the state to care for just one extremely premature baby receiving care in a neonatal intensive care unit – “a minimal investment for a tremendous benefit to women in our state,” McGee said.
The bill allows pregnant women to receive care under presumed Medicaid eligibility for 60 days after their first doctor's visit. The hope is that by the end of the 60-day window, they will have submitted their paperwork and been fully determined as eligible for Medicaid – since a regular Medicaid application only takes 45 days to process.
Medicaid application processing times have increased over the last few months due to people being kicked off coverage after the pandemic – the percentage of applications taking longer than 45 days to process was 10.79% last July. By the time this bill would go into effect next July, “unwinding” from the pandemic is expected to be over.
One of the five representatives who voted no on the bill, Dan Eubanks, R-DeSoto, raised a question on the floor about women who are deemed ineligible during that 60-day period.
“If Medicaid pays a doctor bill, and then a woman is found to be ineligible in the end, then that is a part of the cost to the state estimated to be, in total, about $567,000 a year,” McGee replied.
The bill still needs to be passed on the Senate side before it is signed into law, but its rapid passage this early in the legislative session shows promise that it will advance.
Though it's only a piece of the puzzle, the bill would go a long way in addressing pregnancy outcomes in Mississippi, said Dr. Anita Henderson, pediatrician and former president of the state pediatric association.
“We are thrilled that the House Medicaid Committee and then the full House passed presumptive eligibility for pregnant women,” Henderson said. “It will really help moms get that first OB visit sooner to start working on their high blood pressure, diabetes, or any chronic medical conditions, infections. The more we can get our moms seen, the more we can help, the more likely we're going to reduce our premature birth rates, our fetal mortality rates, our infant mortality rates and our maternal mortality rates.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
Podcast: The controversial day that Robert Kennedy came to the University of Mississippi
Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Edward Ellington talks with Mississippi Today's Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender about former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy's speech at the University of Mississippi less than four years after the riots that occurred after the integration of the school. Ellington, who at the time headed the Ole Miss Speaker's Bureau as a law school student, recalls the controversy leading up to the speech.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/?p=359978
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1961
MAY 20, 1961
A white mob of more than 300, including Klansmen, attacked Freedom Riders at the Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery, Alabama. Future Congressman John Lewis was among them.
“An angry mob came out of nowhere, hundreds of people, with bricks and balls, chains,” Lewis recalled.
After beating on the riders, the mob turned on reporters and then Justice Department official John Seigenthaler, who was beaten unconscious and left in the street after helping two riders.
“Then they turned on my colleagues and started beating us and beat us so severely, we were left bloodied and unconscious in the streets of Montgomery,” Lewis recalled.
As the mob headed his way, Freedom Rider James Zwerg said he asked for God to be with him, and “I felt absolutely surrounded by love. I knew that whether I lived or died, I was going to be OK.”
The mob beat him so badly that his suit was soaked in blood.
“There was nothing particularly heroic in what I did,” he said. “If you want to talk about heroism, consider the Black man who probably saved my life. This man in coveralls, just off of work, happened to walk by as my beating was going on and said ‘Stop beating that kid. If you want to beat someone, beat me.' And they did. He was still unconscious when I left the hospital.”
To quell the violence, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent in 450 federal marshals.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
2024 Mississippi legislative session not good for private school voucher supporters
Despite a recent Mississippi Supreme Court ruling allowing $10 million in public money to be spent on private schools, 2024 has not been a good year for those supporting school vouchers.
School-choice supporters were hopeful during the 2024 legislative session, with new House Speaker Jason White at times indicating support for vouchers.
But the Legislature, which recently completed its session, did not pass any new voucher bills. In fact, it placed tighter restrictions on some of the limited laws the state has in place allowing public money to be spent on private schools.
Notably, the Legislature passed a bill that provides significantly more oversight of a program that provides a limited number of scholarships or vouchers for special-needs children to attend private schools.
Going forward, thanks to the new law, to receive the vouchers a parent must certify that their child will be attending a private school that offers the special needs educational services that will help the child. And the school must report information on the academic progress of the child receiving the funds.
Also, efforts to expand another state program that provides tax credits for the benefit of private schools was defeated. Legislation that would have expanded the tax credits offered by the Children's Promise Act from $8 million a year to $24 million to benefit private schools was defeated. Private schools are supposed to educate low income students and students with special needs to receive the benefit of the tax credits. The legislation expanding the Children's Promise Act was defeated after it was reported that no state agency knew how many students who fit into the categories of poverty and other specific needs were being educated in the schools receiving funds through the tax credits.
Interestingly, the Legislature did not expand the Children's Promise Act but also did not place more oversight on the private schools receiving the tax credit funds.
The bright spot for those supporting vouchers was the early May state Supreme Court ruling. But, in reality, the Supreme Court ruling was not as good for supporters of vouchers as it might appear on the surface.
The Supreme Court did not say in the ruling whether school vouchers are constitutional. Instead, the state's highest court ruled that the group that brought the lawsuit – Parents for Public Schools – did not have standing to pursue the legal action.
The Supreme Court justices did not give any indication that they were ready to say they were going to ignore the Mississippi Constitution's plain language that prohibits public funds from being provided “to any school that at the time of receiving such appropriation is not conducted as a free school.”
In addition to finding Parents for Public Schools did not have standing to bring the lawsuit, the court said another key reason for its ruling was the fact that the funds the private schools were receiving were federal, not state funds. The public funds at the center of the lawsuit were federal COVID-19 relief dollars.
Right or wrong, The court appeared to make a distinction between federal money and state general funds. And in reality, the circumstances are unique in that seldom does the state receive federal money with so few strings attached that it can be awarded to private schools.
The majority opinion written by Northern District Supreme Justice Robert Chamberlin and joined by six justices states, “These specific federal funds were never earmarked by either the federal government or the state for educational purposes, have not been commingled with state education funds, are not for educational purposes and therefore cannot be said to have harmed PPS (Parents for Public Schools) by taking finite government educational funding away from public schools.”
And Southern District Supreme Court Justice Dawn Beam, who joined the majority opinion, wrote separately “ to reiterate that we are not ruling on state funds but American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds … The ARPA funds were given to the state to be used in four possible ways, three of which were directly related to the COVID -19 health emergency and one of which was to make necessary investments in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure.”
Granted, many public school advocates lamented the decision, pointing out that federal funds are indeed public or taxpayer money and those federal funds could have been used to help struggling public schools.
Two justices – James Kitchens and Leslie King, both of the Central District, agreed with that argument.
But, importantly, a decidedly conservative-leaning Mississippi Supreme Court stopped far short – at least for the time being – of circumventing state constitutional language that plainly states that public funds are not to go to private schools.
And a decidedly conservative Mississippi Legislature chose not to expand voucher programs during the 2024 session.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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