Hiral Rao

Medicaid expansion will launch Dec. 1 in North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper announced on Monday after achieving what he’s sought for nearly seven years on the job and what’s possibly his biggest policy win. Government health insurance should be available to another 600,000 low-income adults, with roughly half of them receiving coverage on Day One. […]

Gov. Tate Reeves, after months of inaction, has unveiled a plan he says will turn Mississippi’s health care crisis around. However, even some health care experts were stumped by how the Governor’s proposed reforms will work. The plan, which Reeves announced at a press conference Thursday while flanked by state health care leaders, is essentially a complex scheme to […]

In 2002, during the 83-day special session, the longest in state history, members of the Mississippi Medical Association were out in full force in favor of legislation to provide health care providers more protection from lawsuits. The Medical Association, the largest organization of physicians in the state, had members in their white coats at the […]

“Today’s announcement is too little, too late for hospitals who have already cut jobs and services, for KPC Promise Hospital that already shut down and for Greenwood-Leflore that could close down by the end of the month,” Hines said. Kimberly Hughes is the co-chair of the Care4Mississippi Coalition Steering Committee, a nonpartisan health care and […]

As Gov. Tate Reeves announced his plan to save Mississippi’s rural hospitals, the state hospital association’s longtime leader prepared for his last day at the organization. Tim Moore, who’s led the Mississippi Hospital Association for a decade, confirmed to Mississippi Today that the board fired him. His last day in his current position is today. […]

Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves released a proposal Thursday aimed at helping some of the state’s financially struggling hospitals, even as the Democrat who is trying to unseat him has spent months hammering Reeves for opposing Medicaid expansion in one of the poorest states in the nation. Hospitals would pay some higher taxes as a way […]

More than 16,000 Mississippians were dropped from Medicaid in August during the latest round of the agency’s disenrollments. The pandemic-era federal regulations that prevented state Medicaid agencies from disenrolling beneficiaries ended in May. Since then, Medicaid divisions all over the country are reviewing their rolls for the first time in three years.

There is hope. Mississippi may expand Medicaid to cover the working poor sooner than previously imagined. What provides this hope, after nearly a decade of stubborn Republican opposition at the state Capitol? This past week’s comments by state Rep. Jason White, who is widely expected to be this state’s speaker of the House starting in […]

Gov. Tate Reeves, running for a second term this year, is traveling the state vowing he’ll continue to block Medicaid expansion, a policy that would provide health coverage to at least 200,000 working Mississippians and bring at least $1 billion in new annual revenue to the state. A powerful fellow Mississippi Republican Party leader appears […]

Mississippi is one of the most rural states in America, so it should not be surprising that the GOP controls every statewide office there and comfortable majorities in both houses of the legislature. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) once put it, Republicans “pretty much own rural and small-town America.”

In just one interview, the likely new House speaker bucked his party’s leader in a prolific way. But the candor of White’s statement was telling in itself. He acknowledged that his own party was being rightfully criticized for not being willing to even discuss expansion. It was a brutally honest, almost self-deprecating statement, the likes […]

Several Northeast Mississippi representatives say they’re open to the idea of Medicaid expansion after incoming House Speaker Rep. Jason White said he plans to consider it, although some lawmakers remain skeptical on committing money to the program. White, who will wield considerable power if chosen as speaker by fellow House Republicans in January as expected, […]

Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison, Geoff Pender and Taylor Vance talk all things politics, ranging from House Pro Tem Jason White, expected to be elected new speaker, committing to studying Medicaid expansion. Also discussed this week: communications between Tate Reeves’ brother and Auditor Shad White about Brett Favre.

A financially struggling Delta hospital received another bit of bad news: its application for a federal designation that would bring in more money has been initially denied.The regional Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services office in Atlanta has declined to designate the Greenwood hospital as a critical access hospital, according to a letter the agency […]

Mississippi politicians rarely surprise me, but I almost fainted earlier this week when I read that Republican Jason White, the presumptive new speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, was at least open to a discussion about expanding Medicaid in the Magnolia State. The issue is a touchy one for Republicans at both the state […]

Republican Rep. Jason White, heir apparent to the House speakership, said Medicaid expansion, long a bugaboo for the state GOP, will be on the table and at least thoroughly vetted as a solution to Mississippi’s health care crisis next year. “I think we as Republicans have probably earned a little bit of the bad rap […]

When former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear took office in 2007, the Bluegrass State had many challenges — not the least of which was lack of health care for working folks — and limited resources to address them. “Kentucky faced a number of fundamental weaknesses, not unlike Mississippi and a lot of other Southern states,” Beshear […]

A group aligned with the Democrat Party of Mississippi is calling for an expansion of Medicaid in the state. The organization known as “Save Our Hospitals” made a stop in Tupelo for a news conference. Members of the group are calling on the governor and Republican leaders to expand Medicaid. They claim that would free […]

An overwhelming majority of Mississippians are concerned about the state’s hospital crisis, and voters by a large margin favor Medicaid expansion to provide health care for the working poor. A new Mississippi Today/Siena College poll shows 92% of likely voters surveyed are concerned about the hospital crisis, with 70% saying they are “very concerned.” Expansion […]

As he has several times previously, Brandon Presley pledged Wednesday, at a campaign stop in Greenwood, that he would act immediately to expand Medicaid if elected Mississippi’s governor in November. He would start, Presley says, by getting a waiver from the federal government to extend the health insurance to the working poor. That’s the easy […]

Shortly after President Barack Obama ushered the Affordable Care Act through Congress, the U.S. states expanding Medicaid were for the most part Democratic-dominated states in the northeast and west coast with a sprinkling of left-leaning midwestern states. There was, however, a notable exception: ruby red Arkansas.

Two-term Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards calls expanding Medicaid as he took office in 2016 “the easiest big decision I have ever made” — and one that has had clear and convincing positive results for Louisianans. “To me it was an obvious no-brainer, and maybe it’s easier for me to say that than others because […]

Mississippi Today interviewed two Deep South governors about why they chose to champion and pass Medicaid expansion in their states and what the outcomes have been. Those articles will publish on August 24. Brandon Presley, the Democratic nominee for governor, has at times spoken of expanding Medicaid through executive action without approval of the Republican-controlled […]