Healthcare leaders and advocates from across Mississippi gathered at the state capitol Thursday to encourage lawmakers to extend Medicaid coverage to more people amid question marks mostly reliant on the federal government to erase.
Taking the podium during Patient Advocacy Day to plea for Mississippi to join 39 other states and Washington, D.C. in expanding Medicaid were Kimberly Hughes and Neidre Fears of the American Cancer Society, former University of Mississippi Vice Chancellor and American Heart Association President Dr. Dan Jones, and Leonard Papania of Oceans Healthcare. Even Miss Mississippi stood up to voice her support of an expansion plan, one that would offer government-provided insurance to tens of thousands of people who make too little to afford private coverage.
After the event, which drew around 80 supporters with some lawmakers looking on, Hughes and Jones sat down with SuperTalk Mississippi News to further discuss their mission and why they believe Medicaid expansion is imperative to a healthier Mississippi.
“We gave our message in an enthusiastic way and that was successful, but we’ll really know how it went when their votes are taken,” Jones said.
Hughes noted that expansion could bring with it billions of federal dollars, thousands of jobs, and help struggling hospitals not have to front the cost for uninsured patients. But more importantly to her, it would open eligibility to include people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. Currently, the total monthly income for those receiving Medicaid in Mississippi varies by group and age but is one of the country’s strictest.
“It’s important to keep our hospitals open and the economic benefits, but it’s a healthcare issue that impacts a lot of patients in this state,” Hughes said. “Over 200,000 Mississippians have waited long enough. We have put this off for over a decade.”
Jones echoed the patient side of the argument for expansion. A cancer survivor himself, Jones said his time working as a physician in Laurel saw all too often a patient without insurance showing up too late.
“A lot of patients I received too late in the disease process didn’t have access to healthcare,” he recounted, comparing the U.S. to other countries where universal healthcare is present.
“I also practiced medicine in South Korea for a number of years, and in Mississippi, lots of lots of people don’t have insurance. In South Korea, with 10 percent of our gross domestic product, everyone had health insurance. How frustrating is that? Almost every industrialized country in the world has health insurance for everyone because healthcare is a right.”
Thursday’s advocacy event came one day after House and Senate committees passed “dummy bills” to ensure the conversation can stay alive without having to hammer out the details right away as concerns remain over whether newly inaugurated Republican President Donald Trump will overhaul the Medicaid program, as he has teased and attempted to do in the past.
It also happened less than 24 hours after state Sen. David Blount used the Democratic response to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves’ State of the State speech to vouch that new money flowing in from the federal level would “more than pay for the cost of expansion.” Minutes beforehand, Reeves asserted that it’s “the worst possible time” to expand Medicaid as he believes states could have to spend more to close the coverage gap under the new administration in Washington.
Either way, Hughes and Jones are both pleased with Mississippi lawmakers making room for the conversation this session – especially if Trump’s healthcare agenda is released before they depart from the capitol in April.
“We’re very excited that there are vehicles alive to keep the conversation going. That gave us hope,” Hughes said with Jones adding, “If the new administration will quickly put in place clarity around Medicaid on what they want, I think our leaders can craft a bill that will fall within that.”
Last session, lawmakers were on the precipice of sending expansion to Reeves’ desk before the process was halted by disputes over the income threshold and stipulations that insured people would have to prove their employment. To throw another hurdle onto the track, Reeves continues to publicly campaign against the idea, calling it “welfare expansion” with the intention to veto any legislation that might come his way. That means lawmakers have a lot to discuss and come to terms on if they want to create a veto-proof Medicaid expansion plan.
