Mississippi Today
Negotiations begin: Where do House, Senate, governor stand on Medicaid expansion? Is there room for compromise?
The Republican-led House wants to expand health care coverage to upwards of 200,000 Mississippians, and accept $1 billion a year in federal money to cover it, as most other states have done.
The Republican-led Senate wants a more austere program, to expand Medicaid to cover around 40,000 people, turn down the federal money, and have the state ride close herd on anyone helped to make sure they are working enough hours.
The Republican governor wants neither. He has vowed to veto any expansion of health care coverage for poor working Mississippians and is lobbying hard against it.
Thus final negotiations on Mississippi Medicaid expansion begin with a standoff. The measure, House Bill 1725 is now in “conference.” The lieutenant governor will appoint three Senate negotiators, the speaker of the House will appoint three, and they'll try to haggle out a compromise over the final weeks of the legislative session.
READ MORE: Senate passes Medicaid expansion ‘lite' with veto-proof majority
Is there any common ground to find, and if so, is it common enough to get a two-thirds majority of lawmakers to override a Gov. Tate Reeves veto?
These questions were on full display when longtime Rep. Willie Bailey, D-Greenville, quizzed House Medicaid Chairwoman Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, on Wednesday on how strong she was going to push the 52 senators and the lieutenant governor in the conference process to agree to the House's plan.
“I want a yes or no,” Bailey said. “Are you going to advance and keep to the House position? I want a yes or no.”
“Yes sir,” McGee responded. “We are going to represent the House position on that.”
But McGee's challenge in hammering out a compromise is Senate leaders have acknowledged that maintaining the two-thirds support for expansion in their chamber is fragile and any major change could derail the coalition needed to override a potential veto.
McGee's Senate counterpart, Medicaid Chairman Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, hasn't left much air for negotiations to date with his comments. Neither has the lieutenant governor, who oversees the Senate.
“If no work requirements, no expansion,” Blackwell has said several times. This would appear to be a poisoned pill that would prevent Medicaid expansion at least for now. Federal Medicaid under President Joe Biden's administration has refused to sign off on work requirements, and rescinded those previously approved in other states.
House leaders said they also want a work requirement, but their expansion would still take effect if the state's request is denied.
Senate leaders also to date have appeared dead set on “expansion lite,” increasing coverage only to those at less than 100% of the federal poverty level. This move would ensure the state does not receive about $1 billion a year in federal Medicaid dollars, plus nearly $700 million more over the first two years to cover expansion costs.
Senate leaders say this would cause too many people to drop private insurance coverage.
House leaders counter that having state taxpayers cover the cost of expansion — and provide coverage to far fewer people — instead of using federal dollars makes little sense. House Speaker Jason White has reiterated McGee's vow to stand firm on the House position to cover people up to 138% of the poverty level, and thus draw down billions of federal dollars for the coverage and help upwards of 200,000 people.
The nearly $700 million “signing bonus” of federal dollars over the first two years of the House plan would cover all the state's expansion costs for four years. White noted the House plan would repeal in four years without further legislative action, so the program would be a “free, four-year pilot program” that could be scrapped if it showed poor results.
One middle ground option would be for Mississippi to create a program similar to Arkansas' expansion — cover people up to 138% of poverty level, and draw down the extra federal dollars, but do so with subsidized private insurance, using the extra federal money to pay for the subsidies. House leaders say they're open to such a compromise, and even have a state insurance exchange bill that could be a vehicle for such a plan. Senate leaders have been noncommittal on such an option.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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.
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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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