Mississippi Today
House passes pharmacy benefit manager transparency bill


A bill that aims to increase pharmacy benefit managers’ transparency by requiring them to report data to the agency that oversees pharmacy practice in Mississippi passed in the House of Representatives Thursday.
But the Board of Pharmacy and some pharmacists say the legislation doesn’t do enough to help pharmacies and patients.
House Speaker Jason White, who authored the bill, called it “a good first step.” It will give the Board of Pharmacy – and the public – insight into the companies’ business practices to ensure they are compliant with the law, he told Mississippi Today.
The bill, which passed 88-8, does the following:
- Prohibits pharmacy benefit managers from charging insurers more for drugs than pharmacists are paid, a practice that can be used by the companies to inflate their profits.
- Requires pharmacy benefit managers to submit reports detailing the rebates, or cost savings, they receive from pharmaceutical companies and to disclose their affiliations with pharmacies to the Board of Pharmacy.
- Requires drug manufacturers and health insurers to submit reports detailing wholesale drug costs and information about drug costs and spending, respectively, to the Board of Pharmacy.
- Tasks the Board of Pharmacy with developing a website summarizing the reports.
- Allows the Board of Pharmacy to issue subpoenas during audits of pharmacy benefit managers and forces the company to pay for the audit if it is found to be noncompliant with state statute.
It will next go to the Senate for consideration.
But some advocates say the bill does not do enough to protect independent pharmacists, or retail pharmacies not owned by a publicly traded company or affiliated with a large chain, and the customers they serve.
Many Mississippi independent pharmacists fear they may be forced to close as a result of low payments from pharmacy benefit managers, which small businesses do not have the leverage to negotiate.
“Collecting the data is one thing. Doing something with it is another,” said Robert Dozier, the executive director of the Mississippi Independent Pharmacy Association. “When you look at the legislation, it does nothing to help the pharmacists, and it’s not tightening the loopholes that the Board of Pharmacy needs. It’s not going to do a whole lot.”
In a statement read by Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes, a Republican from Picayune and chair of the Drug Policy committee, on the House Floor, the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy requested that the legislation be amended to heighten the regulatory enforcement authority it holds over pharmacy benefit managers, though it did not name specific tools that would be helpful.
The Board of Pharmacy did not respond to a request for comment by the time the story published.
Dozier said he supports a bill brought by Hobgood-Wilkes which institutes a standardized pricing model for prescription drugs based on national average drug costs.
Several states, including Kentucky, have passed laws that use the pricing model to regulate drug costs.
But White said the House is not yet ready to approve a specific pricing model, and that he would not vote for Hobgood-Wilkes’ bill if it made it to the House floor.
In the past, legislation to regulate pharmacy benefit managers in Mississippi has struggled to gain support. A 2023 bill proposed by Hobgood-Wilkes using the same standardized pricing model died in the House Insurance Committee, chaired by Rep. Jerry Turner, R-Baldwyn.
A 2024 bill that would have increased pricing transparency and prohibited pharmacy benefit managers from retaliating against pharmacies or charging insurance plans or patients more than the amount they paid pharmacies for a prescription died in the House.
White said he would support appropriations for additional staff to allow the Board of Pharmacy to carry out new responsibilities included in the bill.
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.
Mississippi Today
State, MS Power extend life of coal unit to energize data centers

Last week, the state Public Service Commission unanimously approved a special contract that will extend the life of a Mississippi Power coal unit in order to meet energy demands for a recently announced data center project in Meridian.

Gov. Tate Reeves announced last month a $10 billion investment from Compass Datacenters. The Dallas-based company will build eight centers, and in exchange will receive multiple tax exemptions, Mississippi Today reported. The project will be located within the Mississippi Power service area. The utility, a subsidiary of Southern Company, serves 192,000 customers in the southern and eastern parts of the state.
Following a 2020 directive from the PSC to get rid of excess generation capacity, Mississippi Power initially planned to close the two coal-powered units at Plant Victor J. Daniel — in Jackson County, about 10 miles north of Moss Point — by 2027. In 2023, though, the utility pushed the retirement date back a year in order to support demand needs for its sibling company, Georgia Power, Grist reported.
Then on Jan. 9, Mississippi Power informed the PSC that, in order to power the Compass Datacenter facilities, it would have to delay closure of at least one of the coal units, as well as “potentially other fossil steam units,” until the mid-2030s.
Central District Public Service Commissioner De’Keither Stamps told Mississippi Today that the PSC’s job is to meet demand, and that until Mississippi Power has the option to include nuclear power in its arsenal, “we’re going to need all the power we can get in that service area.”
“We can’t stop economic development because we’ve got to wait, you know, 15 years for some nuclear power in the service area,” Stamps said.

Throughout the last couple decades, the country has moved away from coal as an energy source because of its contribution to global warming but also because of air and water pollution associated with coal-burning facilities. A 2023 study from George Mason University, the University of Texas and Harvard University found that exposure to fine particulate pollutants known as PM2.5 from coal plants contributed to 460,000 deaths around the country between 1999 and 2020, twice the mortality rate of PM2.5 exposure from other sources.
Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, whose district includes Plant Daniel, called the facility a “fixture of our community” because of the jobs and tax revenue it provides. He said he wasn’t aware of any health concerns related to air emissions from the plant.
“I don’t hear from any constituents that say, ‘Hey, we don’t want this here,’” England said.
England added that Plant Daniel retiring units could potentially hurt its tax assessment, meaning less revenue for public needs like the local school district. He also pointed to emission “scrubbers” that Plant Daniel and other coal facilities have added in recent years. The same 2023 study found that scrubbers have dramatically decreased sulfur dioxide emissions as well as air pollution-related deaths.
In addition to Compass Datacenters, Mississippi Power also entered into a special contract to supply power for a plywood manufacturer, owned by Hood Industries, in Beaumont, Mississippi.
The two deals, a spokesperson for Mississippi Power said, necessitate keeping the coal and other units set for retirement alive.
“We are committed to keeping the Mississippi Public Service Commission and our customers up to date and will present additional details in our upcoming 2025 Mid-Point Supply-Side Update,” spokesperson Jeff Shepard said via email. “These incredible economic development projects will create a significant number of jobs and bring billions of dollars of investment to southeast Mississippi.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Legislation to license midwifery clears another hurdle

A bill that would establish a clear pathway for Mississippians seeking to become professional midwives passed the House after dying in committee several years in a row.
“Midwives play an important role in our state, especially in areas where maternal health care is scarce,” said Rep. Dana McLean, R-Columbus and author of the bill. “I’m happy that House Bill 927 passed the House yesterday and urge our senators to join us in passing this much-needed legislation.”
Despite the legislation imposing regulations on the profession and mandating formalized training, many midwives have voiced their support of the bill. They say it will help them care more holistically for women and allow them new privileges like the ability to administer certain labor medications – and will open the door to insurance reimbursement in the future.
“We have so few midwives integrated in the system and so few midwives practicing in the state,” explained Amanda Smith, a midwife in Hattiesburg who went out of state to receive her professional midwifery license. “We believe that licensure really will help create a clear pathway so people know exactly how to become a midwife in Mississippi.”
It isn’t guaranteed that the bill would make midwifery more accessible to low-income women. But licensure makes it more likely.
Currently, neither Medicaid nor private insurance reimburse for unlicensed midwifery services. Licensing professional midwifery wouldn’t necessarily mean that insurance companies would immediately start reimbursing for the services, but it’s the only way they might.
A new federal program is seeking to make midwifery reimbursable by Medicaid.
Mississippi is one of 15 states chosen by the federal government to participate in a new grant program called the Transforming Maternal Health Model, which began in January 2025 and will work to expand access and reimbursement for services – including licensed midwifery.
The bill has historically faced opposition both from those who think it does too much, as well as those who think it does too little.
To those who think it overregulates the profession, McLean says her loyalty lies with her constituents and making sure they have the most transparency when seeking birth options. Currently, anyone can operate under the title midwife in the state of Mississippi – with no required standard of training.
“We are legitimizing (professional midwifery) … As a legislator, it’s my duty to try to protect the citizens of Mississippi,” McLean said. “And by putting this legislation forward, it helps to inform those clients that would want the services of a midwife but don’t know how to choose.”
As for those who think it does too little, McLean says the bill would leave the details up to a board – established by the bill and made up mostly of midwives – who would be able to decide requirements for professional midwifery better than a room full of lawmakers.
“There’s a lot of men in here that know a lot about birthing babies,” McLean said during a lively floor debate Thursday.
The bill now advances to the Senate.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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