JACKSON • The doctor who will soon lead the Mississippi State Department of Health is openly supporting giving poor mothers in the state access to more Medicaid coverage after they give birth, a policy that some Republican lawmakers have rejected.
Dr. Daniel Edney, the incoming state health officer, said in an interview on conservative statewide radio station Supertalk Mississippi that expanding postpartum care from the state’s current policy of two months to a full year would be the “easiest thing to do” to improve health disparities.
“We have got to look at moving postpartum care back out to a year again,” Edney said. “Two months is not enough. We have women who are dying in months three, four and five from complications of pregnancy.”