Mississippi Today
Bill to revise law for low-income pregnant women passes first legislative hurdle


Low-income women would be able to access free prenatal care faster under a bill that passed the House Medicaid committee Wednesday.
The same law passed the full Legislature last year, but never went into effect due to a discrepancy between what was written into state law and federal regulations for the program, called Medicaid pregnancy presumptive eligibility.
House Medicaid Chair Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, author of the bill, revised last year’s bill to remove the requirement women show proof of income. She is hopeful the policy will garner the same support it did last year when it overwhelmingly passed both chambers.

“CMS (The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) had some issues that they really did not approve of in our law, and after we talked it through we realized that the changes they wanted to make do no harm to the intent of the Legislature, do no harm to the law itself, do not add any costs to the fiscal note of the program,” McGee said during the committee meeting.
Changes include that a pregnant woman will only have to attest to her income – not provide paystubs – and will not have to provide proof of pregnancy.
McGee’s bill also makes changes to the time frame for presumptive Medicaid eligibility. Last year’s legislation said women would only be eligible for 60 days under the policy, with the hopes that by the end of those 60 days her official Medicaid application would be approved. Federal guidelines already have a different timeframe baked in, which state lawmakers have included in this bill.
The federal timeframe, now congruent with McGee’s bill, says a pregnant woman will be covered under presumptive eligibility until Medicaid approves her official application, however long that takes – as long as she submits a Medicaid application before the end of her second month of presumptive eligibility coverage.
“Let’s say a woman comes in for January 1 and is presumed eligible. She has until February 28 to turn her application in,” McGee said, adding that if Medicaid took a month to approve her application, the pregnant woman would continue to be covered through March.
Eligible women will be pregnant and have a household income up to 194% of the federal poverty level, or about $29,000 annually for an individual.
The bill does not introduce an additional eligibility category or expand coverage. Rather, it simply allows pregnant women eligible for Medicaid to get into a doctor’s office earlier. That’s notable in Mississippi, where Medicaid eligibility is among the strictest in the country, and many individuals don’t qualify until they become pregnant.
An expectant mother would need to fall under the following income levels to qualify for presumptive eligibility in 2025:

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1944

Feb. 16, 1944

The U.S. Navy began training for its first Black officers.
Sixteen officer candidates began their work at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. All 16 passed the course, but the Navy only commissioned 13.
They overcame racism and became known as “the Golden 13” for their excellence, paving the way for President Harry Truman to desegregate the military four years later.
In Paul Stillwell’s book on the men, Gen. Colin Powell wrote that these men understood that “history had dealt them a stern obligation. They realized that in their hands rested the chance to help open the blind moral eye that America had turned on the question of race.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
House gasoline tax proposal would hurt most when prices are highest

Legislation passed by the state House would increase the tax burden on Mississippi drivers as the price of gasoline rises.
That cruel reality, which would be especially onerous for low income Mississippians, is a simple fact of how a sales tax works.
Mississippi’s current tax on motor fuel of 18.4 cents per gallon is the second lowest in the nation.
Transportation officials and others say the state needs additional revenue to pay for the ever-increasing costs of building new roads and bridges and maintaining the existing transportation system.
It is not surprising that both chambers are responding to those concerns of the need for more funding for transportation.
But the leaders of the two chambers are taking very different approaches to increasing the tax to pay for transportation needs. Senate leaders, led by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, are proposing increasing the tax 3 cents per gallon for three years until it caps out at 27.4 cents per gallon – which would still be lower than the gasoline tax in most states.
The House proposal would move Mississippi out of the mainstream of how states levy taxes on gasoline. The House, led by Speaker Jason White and Ways and Means Chair Trey Lamar, has passed out of the House legislation to impose a 5% sales tax on the cost of each purchase of motor fuel, both diesel and gasoline.
Simply put, the Senate plan taxes a gallon of gas. The House proposal places a tax on the cost of a gallon of gas.
For instance, a tax of 5% would be added to the purchase of $40 of gas. The Senate plan, when fully enacted, would add 9 cents to each gallon of gas – whether the gallon cost $1 or $5.
Only 10 states levy a sales tax on gasoline, according to the Tax Policy Center.
Already, the gasoline tax increase proposed by the House is higher than the Senate plan would be when fully enacted. According to AAA, the average cost of a gallon of gasoline in the state is currently $2.67, meaning Mississippi drivers would be paying about 13.4 cents more per gallon than they are paying now if the House tax hike is enacted. Drivers of diesel vehicles would be paying an extra 16.5 cents per gallon since the average cost of a gallon of diesel is currently $3.31 cents per gallon.
Remember, that tax would be in addition to the 18.4 cents already levied on a gallon of motor fuel.
Under the House plan, as the cost of gasoline increases making it more difficult to afford, the tax levied by the state also would increase, creating a double whammy. The double whammy would be exacerbated in a state with a large rural population often driving long distances to work. The average commute time in Mississippi is 25.2 minutes.
Despite that hardship, there is some logic to the House plan. The 18.4 cent per gallon tax on a gallon of gas has been in effect since 1987. Since that tax was imposed, vehicles have become much more energy efficient, meaning less gasoline is being purchased resulting in the revenue collected from the 18.4 cent-per gallon tax decreasing over time when adjusted for inflation. A sales tax most likely would ensure the revenue generated would not be static.
To offset the lost revenue from a tax on a gallon of gas, some states have tried to impose a tax based on the miles driven.
In the past fiscal year, the 18.4-cent per gallon levy generated $440 million in revenue with the bulk (71%) going directly to the state Department of Transportation for road and bridge construction.
Both chambers are proposing increasing the tax on motor fuels while reducing other taxes. The House would totally eliminate the income tax and reduce the tax on groceries while increasing the sales tax on most retail items by 1.5 cents. The Senate wants to reduce both the income tax and the tax on groceries.
As lieutenant governor, current Gov. Tate Reeves blocked all efforts to increase the tax on motor fuels to pay for transportation needs.
As governor, Reeves badly wants his legacy to be the elimination of the income tax. He calls it his No. 1 priority.
Whether he would sign legislation increasing the tax on gasoline in exchange for the elimination of the income tax is questionable. On social media, though, he has expressed support for the House plan to eliminate the income tax while increasing the gasoline tax and the sales tax on most retail items.
Whether such a tax swap would benefit the working poor, who comprise a large portion of the Mississippi population, is debatable.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1848

Feb. 15, 1848

Sarah Roberts, a 5-year-old Black American, entered an all-white school in Boston, only to be turned away. She wound up entering four more white schools, and each time she was shown the door. And so she found herself walking from home, passing five all-white schools on the way to an all-black school the city of Boston was forcing her to attend.
This angered her father, Benjamin, one of the nation’s first Black American printers, and he sued the city. Robert Morris, one of the nation’s first Black lawyers, took up the case.
“Any child unlawfully excluded from public school shall recover damages therefore against the city or town by which such public instruction is supported,” Morris wrote.
He and co-counsel Charles Sumner argued that the Constitution of Massachusetts held all are equal before the law, regardless of race, and that the laws creating public schools made no distinctions.
Sumner wrote, “Prejudice is the child of ignorance … sure to prevail where people do not know each other.”
In 1850, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld the racial segregation of public schools. The attorneys brought the issue to state lawmakers. In 1855, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts banned segregated schools — the first law barring segregated schools in the U.S.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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