Mississippi Today
Who’s opposed to Mississippi Medicaid expansion and why?
Who's opposed to Mississippi Medicaid expansion and why?
Note: This article is part of Mississippi Today's ongoing Mississippi Health Care Crisis project.Read more about the project by clicking here.
While running for governor in 2019, then-Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves was quizzed at a Capitol Press Corps luncheon whether his opposition to expanding Medicaid coverage to working-poor Mississippians was softening.
"I am opposed to Obamacare expansion in Mississippi. I am opposed to Obamacare expansion in Mississippi. I am opposed to Obamacare expansion in Mississippi. I don't know how many ways I can explain this to y'all," Reeves said.
Reeves' fellow Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn has frequently given equally deep and erudite explanations of his steadfast opposition to accepting $1 billion a year in federal money to help the working poor and Mississippi's distressed hospitals.
"From what I know about it, we cannot afford it," Gunn said tersely to questions as the 2021 legislative session ended, obviously not wanting to discuss the issue further.
For more than a decade, despite most other states expanding Medicaid and despite hospitals, doctors, economists and experts saying it would be a net benefit to the poorest, sickest, most uninsured and most federally dependent state in the country, most of Mississippi's top elected leaders have refused the offer.
As some hospitals across the state close their doors and others struggle on the brink of collapse — even as the state budget sees record gains from other federal spending — Mississippi leaders' recalcitrance growingly appears more political than pragmatic.
Reeves and Gunn, who can block expansion from their posts, remain steadfast in their opposition. Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has said he's open to the idea, as are a small but growing number of legislative Republicans. But Hosemann avoids even saying the words "Medicaid expansion" and hasn't pressed his colleagues on full expansion. He has, unsuccessfully, pushed for expanding postpartum Medicaid coverage for mothers.
Q&A: What is Medicaid expansion, really?
Notably, all three top leaders declined interviews or comments for this story. Medicaid expansion hasn't gotten a real hearing with the Legislature in years, even as the federal government has tried to sweeten the deal and counter arguments against expansion.
At times, including recently, some state leaders have said they would instead prefer people to have good jobs that provide private insurance. But this has proved elusive, with Mississippi seeing slow job growth, the lowest median income in the nation and among the highest rates of uninsured people.
Mississippi Today compiled a list of the main arguments against Medicaid expansion that opponents have given over the last decade, with counterpoints from proponents:
We can't afford it/it will tank the state budget
"I don't see Medicaid expansion as something that is beneficial to the state of Mississippi," Gunn said in 2021. "I just don't think the taxpayers can afford it. That is what it boils down to is the taxpayers. It is their money. I just don't have the taxpayers calling saying we want you to raise taxes so we can expand Medicaid."
So far, Medicaid expansion hasn't tanked any states' budgets, nor have any been forced to raise taxes to cover ACA Medicaid expansion.
Numerous studies, including those by Mississippi's state economists, say the state — including government coffers — would see a net economic benefit, including growth in GDP and population and the creation of thousands of jobs.
Studies in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana and Virginia showed the states saw a net reduction of more than 4% in spending on their traditional Medicaid programs after expansion. Louisiana's Medicaid expansion in 2016 brought a 33% reduction in uncompensated care costs for hospitals, including a 55% reduction for rural hospitals.
READ MORE: Here's what experts say about expanding Medicaid in Mississippi
The federal government will quit paying its share
"For us to enter into an expansion program would be a fools errand," then-Gov. Phil Bryant said in 2014. "I mean, here we would be saying to 300,000 Mississippians, 'We're going to provide Medicaid coverage to you,' and then the federal government through Congress or through the Senate, would do away with or alter the Affordable Care Act, and then we have no way to pay that."
But the Affordable Care Act, including Medicaid expansion, has survived through three presidents, including Republican Donald Trump who wanted to do away with it, and through multiple congresses, including two under Republican control of both chambers. It has survived numerous court challenges (Mississippi has joined in at least a couple of those).
Mississippi leaders made the same argument to postpone adopting the Medicaid program when it was created in the 1960s. It was one of the last states to do so, in 1969. Arguments that the feds would stop funding it and leave Mississippi in the lurch have proved erroneous, and the Magnolia State has enjoyed the highest rate of federal reimbursement for its existing Medicaid program for many years.
It's subsidizing people who won't work/it's more welfare
"We believe all able-bodied folks ought to get off the couch and go to work," state Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson, a longtime former lawmaker, said at the Neshoba County Fair in July, mirroring comments many other leaders have made over years. "This is why we oppose Medicaid expansion."
By its definition, covering people who make up to 138% of poverty level income, Medicaid expansion is aimed at helping the working poor.
"These are people that are working," said Tim Moore, president of the Mississippi Hospital Association. "By definition, to be at 138% above poverty, you have to have income from somewhere. In fact these are people that are often working multiple jobs, but still don't have the discretionary income to afford the high cost of premiums."
"Medicaid expansion is not about putting people on the welfare rolls," state Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said last year. "This is about expanding health care availability to the poor, the disabled, the folks that fall through the cracks, that are not able to get on the Affordable Care Act."
READ MORE: How Medicaid expansion could have saved Tim's leg and changed his life
It would drive up private insurance costs, especially if hospitals help pay for expansion
"If hospitals are going to pay for it, that means that your cost when you go to the hospital is going to go up," Reeves said during a 2019 gubernatorial election debate, referring to Mississippi hospitals offering to pay the state's share of expansion. "If you have private insurance, that means that your insurance rates are going to go up."
Others over the years have warned that expansion in general would drive up private insurance premiums.
But driving down uncompensated care costs for Mississippi hospitals, which has hovered around $600 million a year (lowered temporarily a bit recently because of federal COVID-19 relief money) would allow hospitals to lower prices, Moore said. One recent study said expansion would cut Mississippi hospitals' uncompensated care by an average of $251.6 million a year from 2020-2030. The same study projects private premiums paid each year would also fall by $52.6 million over the same period.
"Treating people with no coverage forces the costs onto everyone else," Moore said. "Plus, if people have coverage, they get care in a more timely, more efficient manner. You have less chronic problems, less higher-cost problems."
As for hospitals paying the state's share of expansion, as MHA proposed with the MS Cares plan in 2019, Moore said that's a moot point now, because Mississippi hospitals are struggling so bad financially now that they couldn't afford to do it.
Medicaid is broken, full of fraud and provides poor health outcomes
When Mississippi lawmakers in 2017 passed an act aimed at preventing fraud in Medicaid and welfare, one concern cited during debate was that there were dead people on Medicaid rolls.
"Are you talking about dead people on the rolls of Medicaid?" one lawmaker asked then-Senate Medicaid Chairman Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula. He responded: "I am talking about everybody, yes. It doesn't matter if it is dead people. It doesn't matter if it is people double dipping. They need to be following the law.”
Medicaid doesn't provide money to beneficiaries. It provides health care, and money goes to providers. As several lawmakers pointed out at the time, it would be hard for dead people to be receiving health care.
Many, including some state politicians, appear to conflate Medicaid with "welfare." Medicaid is a state-federal health insurance program that, in Mississippi currently, is available only to the disabled, elderly poor people, poor pregnant women and poor children. An able-bodied adult cannot simply be poor and qualify for Medicaid.
Mississippi has been plagued with fraud, corruption or misspending in Medicaid, welfare and other government programs. But this has been mostly committed by politicians, bureaucrats, business people, or large corporations. Beneficiary fraud in all these programs would appear to be a smaller problem.
It is true that Mississippi Medicaid beneficiaries have very poor health outcomes. But given that a large portion of qualifying beneficiaries are very sickly and poor to begin with, this would appear self-fulfilling prophecy. The aim of expansion is to cover the healthier, working poor and provide more preventive care.
"If you start early and provide health care, the outcome is better," Moore said. "If you put off treating a condition, it gets worse. Diabetes is an example. You have an individual that doesn't have health care coverage and they have neuropathy but put off treatment. They get a hole in the foot that gets infected. Then they lose a leg. Or they lose eyesight or have renal failure. Then all of a sudden they have a disability and can't work, and they have to be taken care of. But we could have prevented it, and we could have managed the cost much better."
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Experts dispel fears that Medicaid expansion is too costly for Mississippi
National studies and experts in Medicaid expansion states refute concerns voiced in Mississippi's legislative conference committee that costs to the state would exceed projections.
Among those dispelling that fear are experts and a former governor in Kentucky – one state Mississippi conferee and Senate Medicaid Chairman Kevin Blackwell referred to as an example of where expansion has been expensive.
One study in the National Bureau of Economic Research that analyzed state budget data over an eight-year period found that changes in state spending were “modest and non-significant” after Medicaid expansion, and “state projections (of cost) in the aggregate were reasonably accurate, with expansion states projecting average Medicaid spending from 2014-2018 within 2 percent of the actual amounts, and in fact overestimating Medicaid spending in most years.”
Senate negotiators on Tuesday said they fear more people than estimated would enroll in Medicaid under expansion, and that this would result in higher-than-estimated costs to the state.
House Medicaid Chairwoman Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, reiterated that multiple studies – including one done this month on expansion's potential impact in Mississippi by a nonpartisan research organization – found that traditional expansion would result in savings to the state, not increased costs.
The study found that traditional expansion – insuring those making up to 138% of the federal poverty level or about $20,000 annually for an individual – would cost the state nothing in the first four years of implementation, and roughly $3 million the following year. It would stimulate the economy, putting about $1.2 billion into circulation that the state would not see otherwise and creating 11,000 new jobs in Mississippi, in addition to providing health insurance for poor working people and cutting uncompensated care costs for state- and locally owned hospitals by 60% each year.
While Medicaid enrollment after expansion could exceed projections, that possibility was taken into account by Hilltop's report, which estimated 95% of enrollees would be newly eligible. According to the study, about 200,000 Mississippians would enroll in Medicaid post-expansion.
Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, said he believes the Senate's original plan is a pragmatic proposal that offers savings – “whereas 44 other states have not been that,” he said, referencing the 40 – not 44 – expansion states. The original Senate plan covers fewer people than the House plan, includes a stringent work requirement unlikely to be approved by the federal government, and doesn't qualify for increased federal funding.
Blackwell also made a similar comment, asking his House counterpart “Have any of (the states) – I guess how many exceeded the number of population they estimated at onset? I think 40.”
Blackwell later offhandedly told a reporter he heard from a fellow lawmaker in Kentucky expansion had been expensive.
Asked what their sources were regarding their statements about Medicaid expansion costs, Wiggins referred questions to fellow conferee Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, who declined to comment. Blackwell said he was unable to provide any sources because they “are still working on the bill” and suggested the reporter read an opinion piece by a conservative columnist whose past views have aligned with those of Gov. Tate Reeves, a Medicaid expansion opponent.
Dr. Ben Sommers, a health economist and primary care physician based in Boston, is the author of the National Bureau of Economic Research study that found minimal changes in state spending in expansion states. He shared three additional publications with Mississippi Today that show there is no evidence of expansion negatively impacting state budgets.
“There's a difference between saying that enrollment was higher than expected and that the state budget impact was worse than expected. More people enrolling than projected doesn't mean that states lost money … expansion states were able to bring in 90% federal funding which often replaced things like behavioral health and uncompensated care spending that the state was previously paying for with 100% state dollars,” Sommers told Mississippi Today.
Morgan Henderson, one of the authors on the Hilltop report, echoed Sommers. And even with a lower matching rate from the federal government in current years, Henderson, who has a PhD in economics, believes the costs to states are still offset by other benefits.
“Higher enrollment than expected in the expansion group can lead to higher costs than expected, but this relationship likely won't be one-for-one. More new enrollees can also mean more cost offsets – such as premium tax revenue and other state tax revenue due to the increased economic activity in the state – which significantly mitigate the costs of expansion,” he told Mississippi Today.
Experts and a former governor in Kentucky – one state Blackwell referred to as an example of where expansion has been costly – said that Sommers' and Henderson's characterizations are accurate for what their state experienced post-expansion.
A study published by the University of Louisville Commonwealth Institute of Kentucky found that while Kentucky did experience an increase in its Medicaid budget, the increase has been offset by other benefits, such as savings in general state funds “related to care for vulnerable groups who were ineligible for Medicaid prior to expansion.”
Expansion funneled $2.9 billion into the state's health care system within the first two years, which reduced costs of charity care and collections for medical debts, the study said.
Even if the number of enrollees is higher than originally estimated, that doesn't necessarily bode poorly for the state's budget, Sommers said. On top of the 90% federal match and the increased federal incentives for newly expanded states, the leftover portion the state is responsible for under expansion is mitigated by increased tax revenue, reduced uncompensated care costs to hospitals, and other program cost offsets, Sommers explained.
While the state does put up a small amount of money for each new enrollee under expansion, it is less expensive than the amount of money the state pays pre-expansion to cover uninsured individuals who seek care in emergency rooms and inpatient hospital settings – the most expensive places to receive care and often the only option for uninsured people.
Mississippi hospitals incur around $600 million in uncompensated care annually. Kentucky's hospitals saw a 64% decrease in uncompensated care costs from 2013 to 2017, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
“Everybody's got heartburn over people ‘getting something they don't deserve,'” Dr. Dustin Gentry, a rural physician from Louisville, Mississippi, and self-described conservative, said. “But they're getting it anyway. They go to the ER, they get free care, they don't pay for it, but that doesn't bother anybody. But if they get Medicaid, which will actually pay the hospitals for the work they do, all of a sudden everybody's got heartburn.”
One report estimates that nearly half of all Mississippi's rural hospitals are at risk of closure.
And while the original House and the Senate plans both cover those in the coverage gap – those making too much to qualify for Medicaid currently but too little to afford private insurance plans – the House proposal would draw down $1 billion federal dollars the original Senate plan would not, since it is not considered true “expansion” according to the Affordable Care Act. That means the state would have to shell out more money, receiving its typical 77% federal match instead of 90%, and would not qualify for the additional funds that would make expansion free to the state for the first four years under the House plan.
In the last 10 years, as 40 states have chosen to expand Medicaid to cover the working poor, the poorest and sickest state has held out.
After leaving House conferees alone at the negotiating table Thursday afternoon, the Senate announced its own compromise plan Friday morning. The option extends coverage to those making up to 138% of the federal poverty level and draws down the maximum amount of federal dollars available.
Lawmakers have until Monday to pass a final bill, according to current deadlines.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Mississippi company listed among the ‘Dirty Dozen’
A chicken processing company and a staffing agency that allowed a teenager to clean machines at a Hattiesburg plant, leading to his death, have landed on a national list of unsafe and reckless employers.
The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health assembled its “Dirty Dozen” list compiled through nominations and released its report Thursday during Workers' Memorial Week.
“These are unsafe and reckless employers, risking the lives of workers and communities by failing to eliminate known, preventable hazards – and in at least one case, actively lobbying against better protections for workers,” the report states.
More than half of the companies included on the list have locations in Mississippi.
Marc-Jac Poultry and Onin Staffing
Onin Staffing hired 16-year-old Duvan Perez and placed him at the Mar-Jac Poultry plant in Hattiesburg. The night of July 14, 2023, he died after being pulled into a deboning machine.
Federal law prohibits children from working in dangerous conditions such as meat processing plants, especially because of the machinery. In January, OSHA cited Mar-Jac for 17 violations relating to the teenager's death and proposed over $212,000 in penalties.
Mar-Jac said it relied on Onin to verify employees' age, qualifications and training, and Onin denied being Duvan's employer, according to court records. An attorney for Mar-Jac told NBC News the teenager used identification of a 32-year-old man to get the job.
In February, Duvan's mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Mar-Jac and Onin in the Forrest County Circuit Court. Responding to the complaint, both companies denied most of the allegations.
“The plaintiff's decedent's negligence was the sole and/or proximate contributing cause of plaintiff's injuries,” Mar-Jac states in its response to the complaint.
Since 2020, two other workers have died at the Hattiesburg poultry plant, and workers have suffered amputations and other injuries, according to court records.
To date, OSHA has cited Mar-Jac nearly 40 times for violations in the past decade, according to agency records.
Tyson Foods
The company has operations across the country, including two mills in Carthage and Ceres, as well as hatcheries, feed mills, truck stops and other offices across Mississippi.
The report said six workers have died since 2019 and over 140 have been injured from ammonia leaks, none of them in Mississippi. The gas is often used to refrigerate meat, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, exposure to the gas in high doses can be fatal.
The report also said the company is under investigation for child labor violations, assigning children to work in dangerous high-risk jobs, which is illegal.
In the past decade, OSHA has issued over 300 citations against Tyson, according to agency records.
When asked about what it takes to get companies with a poor history of worker safety to protect employees, Jessica Martinez, co-executive director of COSH, said change is needed from all fronts, including having government agencies like Occupational Health and Safety Administration conduct routine inspections.
She said workers are too fearful to complain. “They need these jobs for survival. Workers are fearful of losing their jobs,” she said.
Uber and Lyft
Nationwide, over 80 drivers for the rideshare apps have been killed on the job since 2017, according to Gig Workers Rising. The report says this is a sign that drivers are pressured to accept unsafe riders.
Internal documents have shown 24,000 “alleged assaults and threats of assault” against Uber drivers, and workers of color and immigrants experience most of the danger, according to the report.
JC Muhammad, a Lyft driver and organizer with the Chicago Gig Alliance, was physically assaulted by a passenger, and said the companies need a complete overhaul in how they protect drivers, including verification of passenger identification.
In his situation, another person, allegedly the mother of the passenger, called for the ride. There was no verification for the person, and the passenger did not have an ID. Muhammad said he had no way to report what happened to police because he lacked the necessary information.
“We've had drivers robbed, assaulted, shot at,” he said during a Thursday press conference. “There are no protections, no protocols.”
In Mississippi, several drivers have been injured, including a woman grabbed by a drunk passenger in Ocean Springs in 2019; a man assaulted by his passenger in Oxford in 2021 and a woman driver shot in the head by a passenger in Gulfport in 2023.
Two other companies included in the report are Waffle House and Walmart, which were cited for inadequate security to protect workers and customers and a lack of worker protections. Both have locations in Mississippi and have had incidents occur here, including shootings and fights.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Isabelle Taft named as Livingston Award finalist
Former Mississippi Today reporter Isabelle Taft has been named as a 2024 Livingston Award finalist in the local reporting division for her investigation into Mississippi's practice of jailing people who have not been charged with a crime and are in need of mental health treatment.
The award recognizes the best reporting by young journalists.
“Committed to Jail,” a 2023 Mississippi Today and ProPublica investigation, revealed that Mississippi counties jail hundreds of people without criminal charges every year, for days or weeks at a time, solely because they may need mental health treatment — a practice that has resulted in 14 deaths since 2006 and is unique in scope in the United States. Taft was named as a finalist along with ProPublica counterparts Agnel Philip and Mollie Simon.
Mississippi Today found that in just 19 of the state's 82 counties, people were jailed without charges more than 2,000 times over four years. Taft spoke with 14 Mississippians about their experiences in jail and learned that people detained for being sick are generally treated the same as people accused of crimes. She obtained Mississippi Bureau of Investigation reports on jail deaths and pored over lawsuits and news clips to identify 15 people who died after being jailed during this process since 2006, (including the most recent death in January, after the original series was published). And she surveyed behavioral health officials and disability rights advocates in all 50 states to show that Mississippi stands alone.
Taft was selected from thousands of applicants as a 2024-2025 fellow at The New York Times beginning this summer. She will cover national news.
The winner will be announced in June.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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