State voters in 2019 chose a new governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and state treasurer along with significant turnover in both the state House and Senate.
There will be new state agency leadership and the legislative committee system will see a substantial reshuffling of the deck in terms of committee chairmen.
All that new political horsepower will be tested quickly. Mississippi’s new executive branch leadership and the Mississippi Legislature face some unavoidable challenges that will prove daunting – and are not problems of their creation.
The Baby Boom Generation is marching toward significant consumption of resources in terms of public health care and public employee retirement benefits. Clearly, Social Security and Medicare are federal programs, but Mississippi taxpayers are at least partially on the hook for state public employee retirement benefits and for a fraction of Medicaid benefits.
What’s the scope of the problem? In 1946 after the conclusion of World War II, the U.S. birth rate jumped from 2.5 million annually to 3.4 million and that pace increased for the next few decades. The birth rate peaked between 1957 and 1961 with 4.3 million births annually.
That increased birth rate from 1946 to 1964 produced 76 million Boomers today. Since 2011 (1,946 plus 65 equals 2,011), every single day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers reach age 65 – and that growth will continue each day until the end of 2030. All 78 million in the U.S. are legally entitled to Social Security and Medicare.
Mississippi’s current population is 2.97 million and some 47,321 of those citizens are over age 65. That number is projected to increase significantly between now and 2030.
Medicaid or public health care for Mississippi’s poor, working poor, uninsured or underinsured is primarily a federal program that is combined with state revenues. When it comes to the provision of health care for the poor, the elderly, the disabled, and children, taxpayers will continue to pick up most of the tab. The only real mystery is whether the lion’s share of those costs is borne by federal, state or local taxpayers or – and this is the more likely outcome – a combination of all three with varying percentages of responsibility.
The Mississippi Hospital Association has since last year pitched their “Mississippi Cares” proposal to expand Medicaid roughly along the lines of the plan adopted in Indiana when GOP Vice President Mike Pence was governor of the Hoosier State.
MHA officials claim the plan would cover hundreds of thousands of the state's uninsured residents and thereby bolster rural hospitals that are now in dire fiscal straits. The proposal would offer coverage to roughly 300,000 low-income Mississippians, including those who can't currently qualify for Medicaid.
For Republicans, Medicaid expansion was a radioactive topic during the 2019 elections except for incoming Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who didn’t formally embrace the MHA plan but spoke favorably on the campaign trail about the Arkansas plan. Since the election, Gov.-Elect Tate Reeves doubled down on his opposition to any Medicaid expansion.
Another critical issue facing Mississippi is the public pension crisis. Mississippi’s Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) is a system of retirement plans covering all public employees including public school teachers, the state Highway Safety Patrol, municipal employees and state legislators.
Revenue for the PERS system comes from three primary sources: investment income, employer contributions (paid by the taxpayers) and employee contributions (deducted from the pay of state employees participating in the PERS plans).
Right now, the retirement system has a $17.6 billion unfunded liability, meaning the contributions of state and municipal employees and income from the plan’s investments aren’t enough to cover present and future benefits for retirees. The system is funded to just under 61 percent.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Sid Salter: Public Health Care & Retirement System Woes Major Challenges for Leaders
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
No doubt that this insightful, new, cutting edge analysis by Sid will be a top ten comment post for JJ in 2020.
I expect them to spend most days playing golf, tweeting, and spewing lies to their gullible base. That’s the art of gop governing.
10:00 am - yeah, it kind of irritates you, don't it....Ha, ha, ha.
10:03, more than irritating. I am an American and it breaks my heart to see what is happening. It’s very sad.
Sid Salter's asinine bloviations are detrimental to this blog. Still better than yet another degenerate Larry David post.
10:00; At the risk of repeating myself (for the tenth time), where were you and your complaining mouth when democrats ran this state for a hundred years?
There's some sort of problem with the State Retirement System? Dayum; Thanks Sid - Ima look into this.
Change PERS on 1 July 2020, get away from a Defined Pension and go to a 401K for new employees.
Current active employees and retirees should get what they were contractually promised year after year after year.
New folk agreed to new terms of the system get what they agreed to at time of employment, just like old ones should get what they were promised at time of their employment.
@ 3:11 That would be a better deal for incoming employees but it will never happen because that would cut the flow of money from Peter to Paul...
@3:11
You can do even better. Employees hired within the last 8 years aren't even fully vested in PERS. Cut them off before they qualify for the entitlement. State employees don't deserve better than private sector.
Listening to the legislators on Paul and J.T. shows, the legs don't even know what the issues are this session.
Gunn and Reeves haven't shared any information.
Except, they did see some kerfuffle at a prison, or something. That might be an issue.
"Mississippi’s current population is 2.97 million and some 47,321 of those citizens are over age 65. That number is projected to increase significantly between now and 2030."
While population number - 2.97 mil - is likely correct, the number of those over 65 is wildly wrong. I don't know how wrong, but I'd bet every dime I have or will ever have as well as everything I own or will ever own that it is _at least_ 5 times that number and I'd bet a whole, whole bunch that the accurate number is at least 450,000 over 65 (using a low-side guesstimate of 15% of the approximately 3 million total).
Whatever the correct number is I would offer that no one can accurately predict "a significant increase" in the Mississippi population over the age of 65 in 10 years. Among numerous reasons are: 1) with the number of of "kids" leaving the state for greener pastures and the trend of 65-plus parents moving to be near children and grandchildren an exodus could occur, 2) with the sad shape of MS healthcare, lots of 65-plus'ers could seek better healthcare in other (southern) states, 3) Mississippi's overall economic decline - a 55 year old professional may well seek to end their career in a better location to "beef up" their retirement and retire to FL, AL, numerous up-and-coming areas in Tenn, Ark, Texas, etc. Note that I am not saying or suggesting that a huge number of 65-plus year old people are suddenly going to pack up and leave, I am only offering what I said I was,
Some admittedly anecdotal information, upon which I base my offering: while I will only be nearing 60 in 2030, about half of our social and professional circle will be 65(ish) in 2030 and darned few of them (or us or those of us now 45-54) seem currently inclined to be in MS in 2030. I also know a lot of folks now 65-75 who got the hell out of MS already, esp from the Jackson metro area and the coast (which is due at least in part to hurricanes and related issues like HO insurance, but also to lack of cultural activities, high-end medical care, and other state-wide issues).
The real problem of this is much like "brain drain" for the younger age groups, where the "best and brightest" leave the, er, "not best and brightest" behind, if such an outflow occurs it will likely be the most financially well-off leading the parade out of the state, leaving the poorest behind to sweep the ever-worsening streets.
Better than the private sector, 4:02. Many private sector employees, at retirement, enjoy both an employee pension and a 401k with employer match as well as payment for stockpiled, untaken leave, plus, of course, social security and other investments. Get off that crap for once.
To suggest " the problems are not of their making" is not true. The loss of population and failure to deal with problems that were clearly on the horizon is the responsibility of everyone in Mississippi.
We keep electing the same good ole boys who have no vision of the future and who see the present through the prism of their ego.
Post a Comment