A Medicaid expansion bill will arrive in the Mississippi Senate by Monday, beginning a process that could provide health care to about 230,000 working Mississippians, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann says.
The Republican senate leader shared plans to introduce a bill before Monday’s legislative deadline for introducing new legislation in an interview with Mississippi Today reporter Sophia Paffenroth on Thursday. Hosemann, who has in the past expressed a preference for the term “Medicaid reform” over “Medicaid expansion,” said in the interview that the bill would likely include work requirements, as other Republican-led states have done when expanding the program. He also touted it as good for business.
“I have tried to tell everybody this: Stop saying Medicaid expansion,” he said. “What we are looking at is providing health insurance for working people. How you couch that is up to you but the interest I have had for a while is: We need to have a better labor force participation rate. That right now is the lowest in the country. But to get to that point … I’ve got to have healthy people.”
Mississippi is one of just 10 states that have not accepted billions in federal dollars to expand Medicaid eligibility under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, rejecting over $1 billion annually over the last decade.
The Magnolia State has the worst outcomes and the highest rate of preventable deaths in the country. Mississippi is also facing a health-care services crisis, with dozens of hospitals in danger of closing or reducing services. Health-care leaders have said that Medicaid expansion would help hospitals avert “looming disaster” since fewer uninsured people would be coming in for emergency room visits who could not pay for care that hospitals are obligated to provide anyway.
Medicaid expansion would cover Mississippians who make too much for traditional Medicaid but too little to receive federal subsidies to help afford private health care. For a family of four, Medicaid would be an option for incomes up to $43,000. But in states around the country, many Republicans have refused to accept the ACA’s Medicaid expansion funds, often
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