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Mississippi’s well being care disaster has reached a grim, catastrophic, inevitable level.
Hospitals are closing, and lots of extra are on the verge. Already sporadic well being companies are being slashed. A whole lot of hundreds of Mississippians can not afford the care they want. Too many individuals are dying.
Worst of all, our state’s leaders don’t look like in any hurry to assist.
In such bleak moments, it’s troublesome to not ponder some “what-ifs.” Right this moment might have been a day celebrated as a victory for Mississippi’s future — one that really modified the trajectory of the state. An amazing majority of Republicans and Democrats alike can be headed to the polls, deciding to do for themselves what their elected officers have refused to do for greater than a decade: broaden Medicaid.
Increasing Medicaid, as 38 different states have finished and two extra are poised to do, would instantly deal with among the most pressing elements of the disaster. It might present well being look after lots of of hundreds of poor, working Mississippians who can’t afford journeys to the physician for primary care or emergencies. It might give an instantaneous shot within the arm to the handfuls of hospitals which are struggling to steadiness budgets and maintain their doorways open. It might convey our poorest-in-the-nation state greater than $1 billion in new income yearly. It might create tens of hundreds of latest jobs, and it might save numerous lives and livelihoods.
However there will likely be no such celebration at this time.
Final yr, the Mississippi Supreme Court docket handed down an unprecedented ruling that killed Mississippi’s poll initiative course of, which gave voters the direct energy to vary legal guidelines. That broadly unpopular court docket choice halted a bipartisan marketing campaign to gather signatures to place Medicaid growth on the poll this November. And state legislative leaders — lots of the identical ones who’ve rejected Medicaid growth for greater than 10 years — broke their guarantees to revive that energy to voters.
Since we launched in 2016, Mississippi Right this moment has proudly held elected officers accountable and offered Mississippians with the knowledge they should do the identical. For months, our well being care and political reporters have intently lined the rising disaster and its results. However no challenge warrants extra targeted, intensive scrutiny than our leaders’ inaction throughout this time.
So this week, we’re launching a long-term venture that focuses on the approaching disaster and potential options to it — together with Medicaid growth.
Greater than a dozen Mississippi Right this moment staffers have been engaged on this venture for a number of weeks. We will likely be thorough and impartial, powerful and truthful. However above all else, we will likely be dogged in our pursuit of fact.
Our venture will, in the beginning, totally outline the extent of the Mississippi well being care disaster. It is going to present how lots of of hundreds of working Mississippians can not afford the fundamental preventative care that retains the extra pricey hospital visits and debilitating private debt at bay. It is going to present how Mississippi has extra rural hospitals at speedy threat of closing than any state within the nation and what meaning for thus many communities throughout the state. It is going to present how the state’s abysmally low funding in public well being negatively impacts each Mississippian, even those that have non-public medical insurance and might get the care they want.
We will even outline what, precisely, Medicaid is. The federal coverage is wonky and extremely obscure. The time period “Medicaid growth” itself has change into weaponized by opportunistic politicians, used as a smoke display screen to keep away from speaking earnestly about its deserves. We purpose to chop by means of the jargon and political noise to indicate the direct results of the coverage, the way it might change lives throughout the state, and what the state might stand to realize by passing it.
And maybe most significantly, we are going to squarely confront the politics of the disaster. At the same time as cries for state intervention have grown on either side of the political aisle, a handful of elected officers have seemingly determined it’s not worthy of focus. They repeatedly invoke the identify of former President Barack Obama, who championed the federal well being care program in query, because the chief purpose to not broaden Medicaid. They disregard nonpartisan financial research that present the big advantages to the state. Too usually, they’ve even seemingly ignored the well being care disaster itself.
Many of those elected officers have persistently mentioned they don’t consider the state can afford to broaden Medicaid. We are going to all the time take heed to and share their explanations for that, and we are going to search to higher perceive them. However we can not ignore applicable context from state and nationwide specialists who’ve datasets that present in any other case. And we are going to speak with elected officers in different states — together with leaders in dozens of pink states which have expanded Medicaid — about how their choice is understanding for them.
We hope our journalism will power our state’s leaders to no less than acknowledge and reckon with the well being care challenges all of us face. Past that, we are going to respectfully press them with questions on potential options.
Some will query the timing of this venture. Lawmakers sometimes ignore addressing main points in legislative classes throughout main statewide election years, like in 2023. From our perspective, there is no such thing as a higher time to pose these questions than throughout an election yr.
Others will accuse us of partisanship or advocacy. An necessary actuality we are going to take into account every day as we serve the general public: A overwhelming majority of Mississippians, no matter political leaning, help increasing well being care entry to poor, working individuals. A overwhelming majority of Mississippians help accepting federal funding to assist maintain hospitals open. And nobody can query that each Mississippian desires a greater future for his or her youngsters and for themselves.
One yr from now, when all 174 legislative seats and eight statewide places of work are on the poll, each voter could have the flexibility to intimately perceive the place their leaders stand on the well being care disaster and what they’ve finished — or not finished — to deal with it. We’ll be certain of it.
In case you have questions, strategies, or feedback about this venture, contact editor-in-chief Adam Ganucheau at adam@mississippitoday.org.
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