Hospitals propose expanding Medicaid
Would extend coverage to 300,000 Mississippians
Mississippi hospital officials on May 13 unveiled a Medicaid expansion proposal they said would cover hundreds of thousands of the state’s uninsured residents and help prevent rural hospitals from closing.
The new plan, Mississippi Cares, could extend coverage to roughly 300,000 low-income Mississippians, including those who can’t qualify for Medicaid and currently fall into a gap of coverage options.
Officials said the “reform” effort — which they hope garners support from Mississippi’s elected leaders and candidates — would be a partnership among the state, its private hospitals and Mississippi True, an insurance company previously formed by the Mississippi Hospital Association. It would require participants to pitch in on their coverage with a $20 monthly fee, and a $100 copay for certain non-emergency hospital visits.
The Affordable Care Act allowed states to cover more people under Medicaid starting five years ago. But the law, pushed by President Barack Obama, remains unpopular among many Republicans, and Mississippi is one of 14 states that have declined to accept billions of dollars of federal money for expansion.
A frequent concern centers around whether Mississippi can afford to cover its portion of expansion costs, despite the feds paying the majority, roughly $1 billion annually, if Mississippi were to expand.
Participants pay fee, hospitals pick up the rest
The Mississippi Cares proposal looks to address this concern by asking participants to contribute with the monthly fee. And the rest of the state’s tab, officials said, would be picked up by the hospitals themselves.
An Indiana version of expansion implemented by former Gov. Mike Pence is similar, requiring the low-income participants to contribute fees to stay covered.
“Uncompensated care costs in Mississippi are exceeding $600 million annually,” Mississippi Hospital Association CEO Tim Moore said in a statement announcing the plan. “Mississippi is among the highest in the country in medical debt. Not because our costs are too high — we rank in the bottom third in the country for health care expenditures per person — but because our need for health care is so great and our means to pay for that needed care is so low.”
In a later interview, Moore described the plan as “reform” and not “expansion.”
“This is basically an insurance policy that is paid for by hospitals that are already seeing these patients anyway,” he said.
Hospitals look for political support
The CEO said he was hoping to drum up support for the proposal from Gov. Phil Bryant, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, and other elected officials in Mississippi.
The plan has been in the works for about a year, he said. In November, Moore met with Bryant and the state’s Medicaid leader to discuss Medicaid
“Mississippi is among the highest in the country in medical debt. Not because our costs are too high — we rank in the bottom third in the country for health care expenditures per person — but because our need for health care is so great and our means to pay for that needed care is so low.”
reform. Bryant asked him to put together a proposal, Moore said, and the Hospital Association eventually gave the governor one, similar to the Mississippi Cares plan unveiled Monday.
“I don’t know what happened” to that proposal, Moore said, adding he didn’t hear back from the governor about it. The association sent the governor the latest proposal on May 13, too.
Bryant has not vocally backed any version of expansion. When Mississippi Today reported in December he’d discussed expanding coverage in a way similar to Pence’s Healthy Indiana Plan, administration officials played it down and suggested that wasn’t the case.
A Bryant spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
If the plan is to move ahead, it would require the Bryant administration to submit a request for waivers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that can approve such a customized coverage expansion plan. But Moore said the governor and the state’s Medicaid division would likely first want the Legislature to sign off on the idea.
The issue of Medicaid expansion is already a central topic in the governor’s race, with candidates frequently pointing out it could help the state’s struggling rural hospitals get compensated for care they provide. Democrat
Tim Moore Mississippi Hospital Association CEO
Jim Hood has advocated for expansion. And Republicans Bill Waller Jr. and Robert Foster both say they are open to some version of reform, in order to get more Mississippians covered.
“It gives the candidates a proposal to at least talk about,” Moore said of Mississippi Cares. “Nobody has put anything out there that gives them a legitimate proposal that we know would work.”
Waller jumped on the Mississippi Cares announcement, saying he supported using “conservative principles” similar to those pushed by Pence to help save “31 hospitals in Mississippi in danger of closing.”
“The proposed Mississippi Cares plan will similarly address these issues by increasing access to care without putting taxpayers at risk,” he said in a statement.
Hospital officials said the plan could generate 19,000 jobs, both in the health care industry, and indirectly in sectors such as construction. They also said the plan could increase the state’s general fund revenue by as much as $100 million.
“It is too important for Mississippi not to be talking about this,” Moore said. “We’ve got to push, and now is the time to do that.”
Contact Luke Ramseth at 601-9617050 or lramseth@gannett.com. Follow @lramseth on Twitter.