Kevin Blackwell (South Haven Republican), chairman of the state Senate Medicaid Committee, is not the first politician to look to Arkansas as an example of how to provide health insurance to more Mississippians.
“No, I don’t believe it,” said Blackwell of the expansion of Medicaid after recent legislative hearings about the financial crisis and potential closures facing hospitals in Mississippi. Well echoes the position of many Republican politicians in Mississippi, who oppose the expansion of Medicaid, which primarily provides health insurance to the working poor.
But then Blackwell said, “There may be alternatives to expanding Medicaid that states should consider.”
The alternative, Blackwell explained, was to receive federal funds the state receives through the expansion of Medicaid to help Mississippians purchase private health insurance.
The private health insurance route was adopted by neighboring Arkansas in 2014. Instead of expanding Medicaid to provide health insurance primarily to the working poor, with the federal government covering 90% of the cost (up to $18,500 per year for individuals), Arkansas decided that people should pay for private health insurance. Withdraw those funds to help buy insurance.
At the time the program was enacted, Democratic Gov. Mike Bieve believed the Republican-controlled Congress would go the private insurance route. The program was endorsed at the federal level by the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama.
The program was left in place by Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and Gov.-elect Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a former spokesperson for President Donald Trump, has indicated no plans for her to scrap the program.
In fact, Hutchinson recently revamped the program to provide additional preventive care for newborns and mothers. increase.
A 2018 study found that Arkansas’ program will bring net benefits to state coffers through at least 2021, as the amount of uncompensated care hospitals have to provide has decreased. A search for more recent studies was unsuccessful.
In Mississippi, Mr. Blackwell said, according to information produced by the Hospital Association, the main factor driving the current financial crisis is inflation and other factors causing hospital costs to skyrocket and revenues not keeping up. I pointed out that there is.
Still, the Hospital Association says expanding Medicaid through traditional routes or the Arkansas model would greatly help hospitals by significantly reducing the amount of unpaid care they provide. The Hospital Association says its members provided about $600 million in uncompensated care in 2021. This is double what he was in 2010.
Blackwell said the state would be happy to consider a program to help purchase private insurance for those eligible for Medicaid expansion. Stated.
Arkansas is currently the only state to help poor citizens purchase private health insurance, with 38 other states following a more traditional Medicaid expansion path. Initially, Iowa and New Hampshire helped the poor buy health insurance, but officials say the more traditional Medicaid expansion route is more cost-effective, according to healthinsurance.org. I thought about it, so it was changed.
— Article credit to Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison —
