The Mississippi State Board of Health has named Dr. Daniel P. Edney the new state health officer, the highest public-health office in Mississippi. Edney will replace the outgoing Dr. Thomas Dobbs as head of the Mississippi State Department of Health on Aug. 1.
“Politicians and policy makers know the end of Roe will mean drastic changes within the state, and they aren’t doing anything to prepare or to address Mississippi’s current social woes,” sociologist Kimberly Kelly writes.
Although the original Postpartum Medicaid extension bill died with a March 9 deadline, Sen. Kevin Blackwell and the Senate still have a few opportunities to send the provisions in the bill back to the House. The Senate can amend bills from the House currently in conference between the two chambers that address the relevant sections of Mississippi Code to include the postpartum extension.
For the second year in a row, Mississippi House leadership has once again killed an extension of postpartum Medicaid benefits, likely guaranteeing that many low-income people will lose health insurance benefits only two months after giving birth.
Fetal deaths have doubled among unvaccinated pregnant women who suffer COVID-19 infections, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said during a Mississippi State Department of Health press conference today.
Mississippi’s justification for unconstitutional abortion restrictions has long revolved around the assertion that the laws, like the 15-week ban recently taken up by the Supreme Court, protect women and children. But the reality is now, and has long been, that Mississippi women and children’s health and economic security is not prioritized.
Yes On 76 organizers hope to put Medicaid expansion on the ballot in Mississippi for the November 2022 election. If voters adopted it, around 200,000 working Mississippians who cannot currently afford health insurance would become eligible for the Medicaid program.
The nearly 25,000 Mississippians who use Medicaid health insurance to cover pregnancy will continue to lose their health benefits just 60 days after birth, after a proposed extension fell casualty to a long session of gamesmanship over control of the Mississippi Division of Medicaid. Dr. Charlene Collier, OB-GYN and director of the Mississippi Maternal Mortality Committee, says the 60-day Medicaid cutoff is illogical at best, and deadly at worst.
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.
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