Two top advocacy groups are accusing Mississippi State Auditor Shad White of misleading Mississippians with a report claiming that up to 5% of Mississippians receiving Medicaid do so fraudulently.
Mississippians in underserved areas now have access to subsidized HIV-prevention services, including prophylactic treatment, from a distance. Combined with promising but underused Medicaid programs, the initiative has the potential to drive down the state’s critically high HIV and other STD rates.
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 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.
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.
With the renovation, the organization hopes to have a permanent place to house “Reclaiming Our Legacy & Shifting the Narrative of Mississippi Granny Midwives: A Storytelling Project.” The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is providing a $50,000 grant to help document the stories of families in the state through interviews with families or communities that had midwives. The dialogue will focus on “granny” midwives and their roles in births as well as their interactions with children. The project will focus on the Jackson Prairie, Mississippi Delta, Black Belt and Loess Hills regions of Mississippi.
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.
Members of the Mississippi clergy invoked the tradition of solidarity and acknowledged the still-unfinished work when they hosted a press conference in conjunction with Working Together Mississippi to unveil a letter expressing their discontent with the Mississippi Legislature’s seven-year inaction regarding Medicaid expansion. The letter also endorses the Mississippi Cares plan, a version of Medicaid reform initiated by the Mississippi Hospital Association that is intended to provide health-care coverage for working-class Mississippians who currently fall into the “gap” between traditional Medicaid coverage and private health-care plans.
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.
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