JACKSON, Miss.—Mississippi will not expand Medicaid this year because of federal Medicaid funding cuts under President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a top Republican in the Mississippi Senate says.
“There is no expansion,” Mississippi Senate Medicaid Chairman Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, told the Mississippi Free Press. “… There is a reason why—it’s funding, it’s the money aspect of it. The Big Beautiful Bill changed funding. I don’t see it happening, and those states that have expanded will probably be going back to their regular programs before expansion.”
The Mississippi Free Press asked the senator if he was concerned about the state’s Medicaid program not having enough funding under Trump’s law if the State were to expand the program under the 2010 U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
“I wouldn’t phrase it like that, but we have a limited pot of money, and we have a lot of services and a lot of people to provide care for, and so we’re just trying to balance that,” said Blackwell, who in 2024 backed a Medicaid expansion plan in the Senate.
On the other side of the Mississippi Capitol Building, the Mississippi Free Press asked House Medicaid Committee Chairwoman Rep. Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, if she was considering Medicaid expansion legislation. While the chairwoman would not comment, she said to check the list of filed bills. Rep. Omeria Scott, D-Laurel, filed two Medicaid expansion bills, House Bills 224 and 226, that died on Feb. 3, the committee deadline day.
The federal Medicaid program and the Children’s Health Insurance Program could lose $1.02 trillion from the federal spending budget approved under the Trump law. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that it could remove between 9.9 million and 14.9 million Americans from the programs by 2034.
Thousands of Mississippians are at risk of losing their Medicaid and CHIP coverage under the law, which experts say could cause detrimental effects to the federally dependent Magnolia State.
Medicaid Expansion Efforts Failed in 2024, 2025
The Mississippi House and Senate both passed versions of Medicaid expansion plans in 2024 to provide health-care coverage for around 200,000 working Mississippians using around $1 billion annually in funding from the federal government. The two chambers disagreed over plans to implement a work requirement for Mississippians who would qualify for expanded Medicaid coverage, since the Biden administration was unlikely to allow work requirements.
The House was more lenient with its proposed work requirement, and McGee said at the time that she would be willing to remove it if necessary. However, the Senate and Blackwell were unwilling to pass a bill without a strict work requirement.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann told reporters on May 2, 2024, that Medicaid expansion would have to wait for Trump to become president because his administration would be more likely to accept work requirements, which he approved for some states during his first term. The Medicaid expansion bills died at the end of the 2024 Legislative session.
“We missed, in my mind, a golden opportunity to expand Medicaid at that time,” Rep. Omeria Scott told the Mississippi Free Press on Feb. 3. “I don’t think that that is something that is going to occur.”
In 2025, the Legislature did not vote to expand the Medicaid program, despite having vehicle legislation in place to do so. Sen. Blackwell and Rep. McGee told the Mississippi Free Press at the time that it was because the U.S. Senate had not yet confirmed Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; lawmakers wanted to understand more about the Trump administration’s approach to Medicaid before moving forward. Since the 2025 session ended, though, the Senate has confirmed Oz and Trump has slashed federal Medicaid funding.
Scott Proposes Medicaid Expansion Using Health-Care Trust Funds
In 1994, then-Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore filed a lawsuit against the tobacco industry to claw back funds the State had spent to treat smoking-related illnesses. The State won the lawsuit in 1997, which forced the tobacco industry to pay the State of Mississippi $4 billion over the first 25 years, with at least 20 annual payments of $100 million or more after that.
During the 1999 Mississippi legislative session, the Legislature passed and Gov. Kirk Fordice signed a bill into law to create the Health Care Trust Fund in which to deposit all money received from tobacco companies as a result of the tobacco lawsuit settlement of 1997.
The State spent all but $50 million of the fund by 2012, and the Legislature voted to deplete the money a few years later. Not all of the fund’s money was spent on health-care needs, Scott noted.
Now the Democratic lawmaker wants to reinstate the Health Care Trust Fund by adding a billion dollars to it from the State’s Capital Expense Fund. She said the State could use some of that money to expand Medicaid.
“And now all we hear about is that we can’t afford health care—that is not true,” Scott said. “We raided the health-care trust fund; we should put that money back.”
Her health-care fund legislation, House Bill 663, died on the Feb. 3 committee deadline without being brought up for a vote from either the House committees for Appropriations A or Public Health and Human Services.