The House on Tuesday sent Gov. Tate Reeves a bill to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage for new mothers in Mississippi from 60 days to a year.
Reeves, who for more than a year refused to endorse the idea, recently announced he would sign it into law. His election year announcement coincided with recent polls that showed widespread, bipartisan support for the extended coverage. This would make Mississippi the last state in the country to provide extended services to new mothers through federal-state Medicaid coverage.
The extension of services, pushed by Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Senate leaders, is an effort to ameliorate Mississippi’s high rates of infant and maternal mortality and help the state’s ailing health care system cope with an expected boom of thousands more births a year from a ban on abortions.