That’s the dumbest thing ever in Mississippi complained a businessman. Other businessmen at the table piped up. That may be dumb, they said, but not the dumbest. But, uh, none said it wasn’t dumb.
The subject was Mississippi political leaders’ obstinate opposition to Medicaid expansion. The first businessman had attended a Mississippi Economic Council session where such expansion was discussed.
Weeks before the Delta Council announced Medicaid expansion would be “in the best interest of our rural economies.”
“An analysis by the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning confirms that the State of Mississippi would actually profit from the decision, increase employment by over 11,000 individuals in the healthcare and social services sector, provide over 220,000 unserved Mississippians – many of them working poor – coverage for the first time, substantially enhance the bottom line and ability to provide services for the healthcare field particularly in rural areas like ours, and drive down the cost of private insurance for employers,” read the Council’s statement.
The main obstacles to Medicaid expansion by state leaders, particularly Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn, appear to be cost and its origin as part of Obamacare. The IHL study revealed, as had others before, that the cost concern does not stand up. That just leaves the Obamacare link.
Greenwood Commonwealth publisher Tim Kalich described the situation like this: “Gunn and other political leaders, most prominently Gov. Tate Reeves, have refused to consider expansion because it was an idea initiated and pushed by Democrats. No matter how much Mississippi insured workers would benefit, no matter how much financial struggling rural hospitals would be helped, no matter how large a boost extra billions a year from Washington would provide to the state’s economy, Gunn and others of the same mindset have refused to listen.”
Well, that perspective makes state leaders’ position look pretty dumb on the face of it. But the truly remarkable aspect of all this is to hear businessmen beginning to say out loud that it’s dumb. That’s an astounding paradigm change.
No doubt the Delta Council’s position was influenced by the troubling status of one of its region’s key hospitals, Greenwood Leflore Hospital.
“Hospital Laying off 30; Undisclosed Number of Physicians Included,” read the most recent headline in the Commonwealth. “The layoffs came a week after (CEO Jason) Studley publicly acknowledged that the hospital was running out of cash and would have to take ‘drastic measures’ to keep its doors open.”
The hospital released financial figures showing it lost $1.9 million in April following a $3.1 million loss in March. At that rate its cash reserves would be fully depleted before year-end.
Losing another hospital in Mississippi would rank high up the dumbness scale.
Another businessman at the table wondered if our leaders might be smart enough to adopt a conservative version of Medicaid expansion like Mike Pence did while Governor of Indiana.
As Forrest Gump said…well, you know what he said.
“My people are fools…they know not how to do good” – Jeremiah 4:22.
Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson
44 comments:
Populist politics are standing in the way of expansion of Medicaid, not responsible accounting or reasonable economic policy. Ask anyone with any foresight and desire to see this state move forward. Our federal tax dollars are right now funding other states’ expanded Medicaid programs, but not our own. Let’s think about that for a second.
You expect the Repubs. to be for something that helps poor people primarily? First, the Repubs. screamed about the baby formula shortage, and then 192 of them voted against a $28 million bill aimed at easing the shortage.
Despite their militant anti- abortion stance, they voted in MS against expanding Medicaid for post- natal care. They want government to force women to have babies, even those conceived by rape, but after birth, well, babies are on their own then.
The modern Repub. Party is an extremist, Trump led cult.
Medicaid expansion will not save rural hospitals. It may delay their closings but it won't save them. "Foresight and desire" does nothing to reverse population loss in rural Mississippi.
Medicaid expansion = healthcare welfare
Usually the dumbest things I see are from Salter/Crawford opinions.
I'm so glad Trump is out of power. I got tired of paying $1.15 a gallon for gasoline when $4.39 a gallon makes more sense. Now that Trump is gone, I feel so much safer that despots around the world are more free to oppress people. The evacuation from Afghanistan was such a resounding success. The US - Mexican border is in complete order now that Trump is out.
If we can the Trump supporters out of state government, utopia will be only moments away.
"Cut off your nose to spite your face"
The Mississippi motto since 1817.
Section 8 - check
SNAP - check
SSI - check
TANF - check
Head Start - check
WIC - check
School lunches - check
Medicaid - check
Medicaid expansion - check
...
...
...
Republicans: "We care about lives!"
Also Republicans: "Wait...not THOSE lives"
And they wonder why young educated people are leaving this State in droves.
And 11:30 forgets why people leave California and New York in droves.
@ 11:30
"free s--T" and welfare programs aren't what keep young educated people in a place. THey might keep poor UNeducated people in a place or attract more of the same.
Many medical offices won't touch a Medicaid patient for several reasons. Ask anyone who works at such an office and they can tell you why. Why add more to the rolls?
Some of the people that would benefit from Medicare Expansion don’t vote and die early from failure to seek health care because of the cost!
The Governor is right to cast his wishes on the poor and the needy because, they, stay their asses at home on Election Day, they get what they ask for, no vote, no voice! They don’t want it, until they need it!
We just can’t keep helping grown ass folks, that can’t think for themselves
We cannot help you if you turn a blind eye, do nothing and expect the Government to HELP YOU!
I came up poor, went to the military, college and worked 2 and 3 jobs all my life! I live comfortably and enjoy life.
If people from other countries can come to the US cannot speak English, go to college and be productive citizens, then why can’t we.
This handout shit has to stop! Need limitations!
Oh yes, I am a proud Black Disabled Veteran that Love this Great Country.
We have some good leaders in Mississippi, it’s just some of the people are backwards and sorry as shit!
Marxist nanny state control of healthcare/ housing/ education/ food and "free sht" always comes with collectivist, anti-family, slave-making, baby killing caveats, like PPHood subsidies, requiring Doctors to find and report gun owners as a health initiative, fascist vaccine and lock-down mandates, business killing regulations, petroleum devastation, forced inflation, forced border invasions, forced free care for illegals, and every possible way to bend the bedwetting dependency program to force compliance with marxist, democrat agendas.
In a positive capitalist growth, limited government, minimal regulation, free enterprise, America-First economy (such as that enabled by Trump's policies), opportunities for prosperity are emphasized over hand out bait to change free born Americans into dependency slaves who give their liberty, their rights, their minds and their children over to the Feds.
Medicaid expansion becomes yet another whip of marxist democrat tyranny insuring a depletion of future state autonomy and a growing dependency on Federal bloodsuckers.
Greenwood Leflore has had financial problems and leadership squabbles for years quite unrelated to expanding Medicaid.
And they wonder why young educated people are leaving this State in droves.
Mississippi was under-counted by 100,000+.
On Thursday the bureau published the results of its post-enumeration analysis, which it does after every Census to identify errors in the count. Its study found that 14 states were over- or under-counted by statistically significant margins. Compare that to 2010 when the bureau’s post-hoc analysis found that all the state population counts were more or less accurate.
States with large over-counts include Hawaii (6.8%), Delaware (5.5%), Rhode Island (5.1%), Minnesota (3.8%), New York (3.4%), Utah (2.6%), Massachusetts (2.2%) and Ohio (1.5%). Those under-counted by big margins include Arkansas (5%), Tennessee (4.8%), Mississippi (4.1%), Florida (3.5%), Illinois (2%) and Texas (1.9%).
Say what you want, believe what you want about Medicaid expansion, but 10:02 has stated the ugly fact. Neither the Mississippi Hospital Association nor other supporters of this expansion boondoggle can offer any facts to refute 10:02.
The sheeple can still be bribed with their own money, which is what the Maxists in government love.
How about significantly reduce the size of the federal government, significantly reduce federal taxes, and keep the money at home? It is likely that it takes $2 sent to the feds to receive $1 back for such programs as Medicare, but I am likely being generous. There are lots of ricebowls to fill in WDC.
Those of you jabbering about “handouts” need to remember that the indigent are already getting Medicaid. This expansion is to cover working people that make too much money to qualify for assistance. This kind of help might move them even farther prosperity once they can get regular checkups and get their health in order. Not to mention what this will mean to the whole state. These aren’t welfare recipients that we are looking to get coverage for. They’re already covered by Medicaid. We’re looking to cover working people. At least half of them are probably Republicans. We can keep sending our federal tax dollars to pay for expansion programs in other states, or we can stop playing politics, expand here and get some return on investment here in our state.
Well Bill, I guess you can just call me dumb. Because I, unlike you, recognize the other parts of this expansion of another federal program for all its aspects, not just the ones that sell to the masses because it is more free stuff for the masses.
Medicaid was established, along with Medicare, in 1965 to provide publically funded health coverage to low income households.
Since its inception, it has been expanded to provide coverage to infants and children (CHIPS) in 1997, along with other creeps into achieving the Democratic goal of the English system of public funding of all healthcare for all. This expansion, created by the ACA in 2014 is another expansion beyond the traditional purpose of Medicaid - so that under it we would have publically funded health coverage for able-bodied working poor. Not the low income originally intended by Medicare but those families with an income less that $35,000.
Yes, for a while, the feds (that's us by the way) will pay for 90% of the cost, but that still leaves 10% for the state (again, that;s us) to pay. And Bill for you to pick one economist's predictions of the impact on the economy leaves out much of his analysis - you only reported the part that supports your writings. Similar analysis was given in Louisiana, but fell apart at the seems when it was actually put into place costing that state hundreds of millions more than the "economist predictions" said.
Sure, the venerable Delta Council is the new poster child for Medicaid expansion - that once powerful, important civic group that now is nothing but a shadow of its previous existence that has morphed into a health care operation ---- funded by the federal government with questionable spending practices ----- so we should all bow down at the alter and ask forgiveness for being so "dumb"??
The real laughable part of your column (which I always read, and unlike some here on JJ, often agree with at least in part and always enjoy) is offering the argument that it would save rural hospitals like == wait for it == Greenwood Leflore County!
GLC has been failing for years due to many things other than the lack of Medicaid funding expansion. Surely you jest to ignore all the crap that has gone on in the operation of that facility and suggest that what it needs is more Medicaid money to right it's ship. Next time, if you want to try to suggest that Medicaid expansion would save rural hospitals, which it won't by the way but we can debate that with your next article pushing your continued theme, pick a hospital that has not misspent millions of dollars over each and every year the past decade or two on wasteful operations and management.
Realize that you are still a shill for the MHA and its push for this government increase - but how many of its members, you know, the half dozen that control the organizaiton - accept Medicaid patients?
If Crawford is for expansion...it can't be a good thing.
Who pays for indigent healthcare in Mississippi right now? Obviously taxpayers and healthcare consumers (cost is passed on and absorbed by those who do pay). So we are fooling ourselves if we think it is not costing us anything currently.
3:08, you are exactly correct that they are working people, that's a requirement. But you leave off that many of them are already covered by private (employer provided) health insurance, and under your desired plan they will move from that to a taxpayer funded program.
Besides just being the beginning step to move everybody from private paid insurance to a federal program, this is likely to do exactly opposite of what you propose could be the result - - you suggest it might move them into properity. It could also move them more into dependency. Let's assume just for arguments sake that both 'coulds' could happen; half one way and half the other.
The result then would be that the state would increase its dependent population from 25% to 31% (assuming that the claimed estimated number of people that would be on Medicaid due to expansion is 350,000) and that more dependent population would be caused how? Same way that many that comprise our current quarter of the state's population, by the government taking away the incentive to improve by providing another entitlement.
11:55 AM California has a $97 billion budget SURPLUS.
The lies and sugary bait of the Left leave us languishing, longing for fractions of freedom so casually traded and lost.
Consider all the federal dependency programs tossed away on poor minorities: how have they benefitted? Broken families, rotted culture, murder and other crimes, swollen prisons and near illiteracy contaminates them. Federal dependency is a pox producing victimhood and entitlement that incentivizes self defeating attitudes and miserable, wasted lives.
Far better to have an expanding private economy, based on thriving small businesses not encumbered in the traps set by marxist bureaucrats. Free people can better serve themselves without government crutches and excuses to under perform.
5:51 pm
Long term obligations, including public employee pension funds and Healthcare costs, make California score 42nd in the country for fiscal health, worse than MS, according to the nonprofit "Truth In Accounting", which labels California a "Sinkhole State".
If these other states will just stop spoiling the so-called poor with these give-away federal programs you'll have less po' folks and be as prosperous
as we are here in Mississippi. That should be obvious. When will they ever learn? Go Mississippi!
I don't remember all the details from 14 years ago. I do remember that at the time when all the advantages and disadvantages were current in the mind of the public that it was a very difficult decision for the states.
If I remember correctly the biggest downside was: Once you expand it, it's going to be really hard to ever contract it. It was tied to Obomacare. Obomacare was clearly unconstitutional (Thanks John Roberts. They must have some serious dirt on you). So that was the thinking, that the federal money could go away at any time and probably would.
It's still unconstitutional. It's basically a tax on breathing. And unlike say car insurance, you can't get out of it unless you die. It's not surprising that so many have forgotten how flimsy the survival of Obomacare seemed at the time. That often happens with decision making. With the passage of time some of the very important factors are forgotten. With a more conservative Supreme Court today, if the right case comes along Obomacare could still be killed.
Just once - once! - in any of his periodic screeds about Medicaid expansion, I wish Crawford would honestly disclose to the reader his professional and financial connections with Anderson Regional Medical Center and the Mississippi Hospital Association. Regardless of his views, Bill is being intellectually dishonest with his readers, how ever many there are. Frankly stated, he approaches this issue with HIS OWN pocketbook at the front of his mind, NOT Mississippi’s.
"Federal dependency is a pox producing victimhood and entitlement that incentivizes self defeating attitudes and miserable, wasted lives."
They don't consider their lives wasted since their goals are being achieved.
Medicaid expansion will not save rural hospitals. It may delay their closings but it won't save them. "Foresight and desire" does nothing to reverse population loss in rural Mississippi.
It's hard to argue with the trajectory of the state when you have a legislature and governor that's willing to sign off on archaic policies. Gunning for abortion, worrying about what bathrooms people use, sports based on gender, that's not where it's at.
People are worried about how much they get paid, can they afford to get to work, can they pay their bills, put some food on the table, and can they afford a little something for themselves in regards to entertainment and personal items.
Crawford's lack of disclosure is not that different than Salter's coziness to the Mississippi poultry industry and its use of illegal alien labor. Sid's been looking the other way for decades.
The same people begging for Medicaid expansion in the media are the same people who were hammering on Reeves/Gunn about population loss. Trusting the government to account for anything is a fools errand.
Lol, it doesn't matter ! Can any of you understand these petty issues are grains of sand compared to what is going on in the world right now ? THEY....the ghost in the room us tin foil hats have been screaming for years is here ! Trump was the disruption ....the ultimate distraction and now THEY has us in the trap. Worshiping flesh and blood men as saviors....thinking Joe Biden is in charge...damn fools.
Bill- Medicaid expansion is not "free"
Bill needs some new table guests-
@ 8:32
Anyone stating that from a financial/economic perspective, California is doing it wrong and Mississippi is doing it right, is lying to your face and/or and idiot.
If California is such a perfect place to live, buttercup, what the hell are you doing here? If your broke ignorant ass needs financial assistance to move, I will be glad to contribute to a go fund me.
sincerely signed,
most Mississippians
@11:33 & 1:33
Other than gun control, Mississippi is doing everything wrong that California is doing. California just has a trillion dollar economy and millions more of the same demographics of dependency who are causing problems here.
@11:33
Take it up with "Truth in Accounting" non-profit folks who, in putting MS ahead of California, are evaluating long term fiscal health, not surfing, rock climbing, public school trans-grooming of children or out-of-body-alternate-reality drug parties.
Califorkya, like NY, is counting on a federal bailout to right their listing financial nightmare ship that is running aground on government employee pension requirements and socialist health system.
SNL made more jokes about Mississippi fatness Sat. And isn't this what/who expansion would be covering ? Lazy fat smokers , drunks and former meth addicts ? And any minority to sign up.
What is the point you're trying to make @1:54? Help me out here. I'm just a guy in Mississippi that is very happy, kind of like most of my fellow citizens. I/we make the most of the life we have and enjoy it. Life is too short to piss it away bitching and moaning.
If you believe a different location will make you happy, you should have been gone. Here's a little secret, though, no location will do it for you, neither will any object, nor person. Happiness comes from within. So, move on out to shaky ground, if you think that's where happiness can be found.
"I wish Crawford would honestly disclose to the reader his professional and financial connections with Anderson Regional Medical Center and the Mississippi Hospital Association". May 23, 2022 at 5:33 AM
Belly Up Town Crier! Spill it! You know he won't disclose whatever you pretend you know! Purge yourself of the facts. Here and now! Reach deep into your gut and pluck it out and lay it on the Blog-Table so we can all watch it squirm under the light of day.
For 6:52
Nothing illegal. Nothing secret. It’s just that his bread would be buttered by Medicaid expansion and yet he never tells his readers. https://www.clarionledger.com/story/money/business/2015/02/27/bill-crawford-joins-anderson-medical-board/24153965/
It’s a simple matter of his professional integrity (as a putative journalist).
To those who think in terms of " Marxism" and " the nanny state" vs " Capitalism and individualism":
Please name countries where Marxism exists and explain how it differs from an oligarchy or dictatorship or monarchy when there is one party control of all branches of government.
Please explain the difference in an economic system and a form of government.
Please define " the masses" and identify a prosperous country that ignores the "masses".
Your ignorance is why Mississippi is a 3rd World State.
For example: You live in a State with population of less than 3 million people but you have NINE State supported 4 year " Institutes of Higher Learning" and is it now 30 community and junior colleges campuses to which you have contributed tax money than could have gone for buildings and land with a "return on investment"? And have you EVER looked at the "perks" you pay for to those who administer and govern these or the actual graduation/employment stats? Are the sports programs that entertain you helping progress our State when it comes to revenues? Are these institutions functioning as capitalistic and self supporting? If so, why can a Junior or Community College board of trustees raise your county tax rate at will?
Philosophical and political buzz words don't solve problems. They've given you tribal leaders who are self-serving and dupe you.
If you ever actually looked at the " sausage making " of elections here, you'll see the role of religious " leaders" and " education leaders" in this State are VIPs to every candidate regardless of party and why that is so.
But, hey, let's make sure the Sovereignty Commission's education curriculum becomes national...an ignorant constituency who blames "others" i.e. fellow citizens rather than those in power for every problem is the best constituency for Fascism.
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