With Monday’s deadline to introduce legislation quickly approaching, both chambers of the Mississippi legislature are planning to drop bills that would expand Medicaid in a state that continues to suffer from a widely publicized healthcare crisis.
As opponents of Medicaid expansion vouch that the idea is nothing but another avenue for welfare, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann argues the opposite. The Republican leader said the Senate’s bill would expand coverage to roughly 230,000 working adults with that being the key word – working.
“You’d have to be making higher than the federal poverty rate to be eligible for this,” Hosemann said, adding that he would also want to see a requirement for participants to make a contribution toward their health insurance. “It’s not just a gift program for people who are not working. Those people, quite frankly, are already covered. This is aimed strictly and solely at working people that are making in that $20,000 to $40,000 range.”
Somewhat based on Georgia’s partial Medicaid expansion model that was implemented in 2023, the working requirement included in the Senate’s bill would ensure people who are employed but don’t make enough to afford private health insurance are still granted access to healthcare. Currently, this group does not qualify for Medicaid, exempting pregnant or disabled adults, which has taken a toll on emergency rooms across the state required by law to provide treatment regardless of insurance or ability to pay.
Hosemann – who before the session announced that his top priority is bettering the state’s struggling labor force participation (LFP) rate – said by expanding Medicaid with the working stipulation in place would result in a booming increase in the number of employed people in Mississippi. By essentially requiring people to work if they want health insurance through Medicaid, he said this combined with the state’s recent strides in education make for the perfect recipe to get the 53.8 percent LFP rate up.
“To be competitive, we have to have two things. We have to have an educated workforce, and this year, we’ll propose last-dollar tuition free community college. Our grade scores have accelerated
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