Some key Republicans in the Mississippi Legislature are starting to warm up to the idea of expanding Medicaid, as long as they can get around doing so without calling it that.
After a decade of irrational, stiff-necked resistance, they are starting to see how foolhardy it is for Mississippi, one of the poorest, least healthy states in the nation, to thumb its nose at a billion dollars a year from the federal government that could help ameliorate both conditions.
It’s tragic, however, that it has taken pushing half of the state’s rural hospitals to the brink of closure, including Greenwood Leflore Hospital, to open GOP lawmakers’ eyes and put a smidgen of their partisan bias aside.
There are reports that Republicans in the Legislature are saying they would consider following the example of neighboring Arkansas, which started taking the extra federal Medicaid money eight years ago but with a caveat. Rather than adding the working poor to the existing Medicaid roles, Arkansas received a waiver from the federal government to use the money to help the newly eligible buy private health insurance.
That apparently was a better route politically to take in Arkansas, another conservative Southern state that was antagonistic to anything associated with former President Barack Obama.
It might be the better route to take in Mississippi as well for the same reason.
But is it the best?
That would be difficult to say affirmatively. So far, 39 states and the District of Columbia have agreed to expand Medicaid since the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, made that an attractive option. Arkansas and two others — Iowa and New Hampshire — initially went the private insurance route. Arkansas is the only one left still doing so, however. The other two changed back to the more traditional method of adding the newly eligible to the government insurance program because these states found it more cost-efficient, according to the reporting of Mississippi Today.
So, let’s see. Thirty-eight states found they could get more bang from the federal buck by sticking with traditional Medicaid. One state went the private insurance route.
If you were making a decision for your business or your family, which would you follow? The vast majority of what other businesses and families are doing, or the one outlier?
Nevertheless, if copying Arkansas is the best that Mississippi can do, much better that than sticking with the self-inflicted damage that has been caused by doing nothing.
