New Mississippi mothers who cannot afford health insurance could continue receiving Medicaid for a year post-birth after Mississippi House lawmakers advanced a bill this morning that would extend coverage beyond the state’s current two-month limit.
“We are fiercely independent and report beyond partisanship. We are truth-tellers,” Donna Ladd writes. “We want a transparent government regardless of who or what party is blocking the information from the public.”
Blake Case, an advisory board member of the LGBTQ Fund of Mississippi, writes that during this session, Mississippi legislators should focus on supporting transgender and nonbinary youth with needed resources instead of “targeting these young people with harmful legislation that will threaten their mental health.”
As in past years, no Medicaid expansion bill survived the legislative deadline for lawmakers to pass one out of committee. Within 24 hours of Reeves’ address, multiple Medicaid-expansion bills died, including Democratic and Republican-sponsored bills that would have allowed residents to vote on the issue in a referendum.
Mississippi Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said the state is “in a crisis mode here on the short term” when he addressed the problem of hospital closures at a Jan. 3, 2022, press conference.
Mississippi’s health care crisis is worsening as hospitals close and lawmakers continue to resist expanding Medicaid, the Mississippi State Medical Association warned.
Advikaa Anand, 18, writes that abortion is a complex moral issue, but choosing to keep one’s baby is just as difficult a decision to make than choosing to have an abortion—a difficult decision only pregnant persons should make.
“I think it’s important to understand that state abortion bans and restrictions will increase people’s need to travel out of state to get an abortion,” Social Work Professor Gretchen E. Ely writes. “This will prompt more people seeking help from abortion funds, which themselves are facing new kinds of legal and financial pressures.”
Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn says abortion should be illegal even for a 12-year-old rape victim carrying her father or uncle’s child.
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