For Mississippi Hospital Association President and CEO Tim Moore, the 2021 Mississippi Legislative session was a breaking point. “I’ll be honest with you,” he told
The COVID-19 pandemic upended our lives and presented new challenges to leaders around the world in 2020. Using this timeline tool, you can explore how the worst public-health crisis in a century unfolded in Mississippi, examine how state, local and public-health leaders responded, and retrace the spread of the novel coronavirus alongside the various policies they enacted.
During this last week, the clergy have been engaging their congregants and have launched an email and call blitz to legislative leadership and legislators. Working Together Mississippi is also currently conducting a Civic Academy Campaign where more than 1,000 leaders will be trained on the critical issues of personal, communal and economic health that are at stake in the current health-care debate.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves says he still opposes expanding Medicaid in Mississippi even though the federal government is offering to give the state an extra $600 million to do so over a two-year period.
Incarcerated pregnant women and mothers of minor children will gain new protections under Mississippi law after the state senators, like their House colleagues, unanimously passed House Bill 196, “The Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act,” on Thursday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci joined state public-health leadership at Tougaloo College today to address America’s history of medical racism and the barriers to equitable COVID-19 vaccine distribution. The medical experts spoke in turn over Zoom, with Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases and top coronavirus adviser to President Joe Biden, leading the event with a candid commentary on the medical establishment’s historical treatment of Black Americans.
Medicaid expansion for 300,000 Mississippians died, but a key provision extending postpartum Medicaid coverage for pregnant Mississippians survived. If S.B. 2799 passes the House and the governor’s desk, Mississippians will qualify for Medicaid for a full year after the end of their pregnancies, up from a mere 60 days of coverage currently.
Gov. Tate Reeves announced on Feb. 9 that more Mississippians had received at least one shot of vaccine than have ever contracted COVID-19, the first of many milestones in the long road toward exterminating the virus in the state. Vaccinations have crested at 288,699, and second shots are rapidly following, with 81,790 delivered in total. The state’s population is just under 3 million. Census estimates from 2019 peg the over-18 population, the core demographic for vaccinations, at 2,276,754, leaving just under 2 million Mississippians left to receive shots.
Mississippi may soon have a new class of independent primary-care providers, if the Legislature elects to end a long-standing oversight requirement for its nurse practitioners. The deregulation move would affect more than 4,250 general practitioners across the state, reducing the costs to practice and potentially aiding the state’s widespread primary-care deserts.
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