Mississippi Today
Gov. Tate Reeves, other GOP leaders who oppose Medicaid expansion should thank Joe Biden for his help
Gov. Tate Reeves, Senate leaders and other Mississippi Republican officials who oppose expanding Medicaid to provide health insurance for the working poor can thank Democratic President Joe Biden for bolstering their argument.
One of the primary arguments used by Reeves and others is that if Medicaid expansion is enacted, it will result in thousands of Mississippians losing private coverage from the health insurance marketplace exchange.
They argue that working poor Mississippians already are being covered through private health insurance policies at little or no cost on the exchange. If Medicaid was expanded, those who had private health insurance at little or no cost on the exchange would be forced under federal law to relinquish those policies and receive health insurance through Medicaid.
The reason that working poor Mississippians can receive those policies at such favorable rates is because of Joe Biden. Those favorable rates were part of two pieces of legislation Biden pushed through Congress โ first the American Rescue Plan Act and then the Inflation Reduction Act. Biden did not support the enhanced benefits as a way to prevent states from expanding Medicaid.ย He supports Medicaid expansion, but he viewed the enhanced benefits as just one way to provide help for those who had to turn to the exchange for health care coverage.
All Republicans in the Congress voted against both bills providing the enhanced marketplace benefits. That is important because the enhanced subsidies that are available to acquire health insurance on the exchange are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025. And it is questionable at best whether they can be extended.
It is unlikely a President Trump, if elected, will extend the benefits. And it also is questionable whether a Democratic President Harris, if elected, can again get such legislation through a divided Congress.
But what we know will be available after 2025 is Medicaid expansion like 40 other states already have enacted, in which the federal government pays the bulk of the cost to provide health care for the working poor.
During the 2024 Mississippi legislative session, Reeves, much of the Senate leadership and others cited the health insurance policies available on the exchange as a reason not to expand Medicaid. Ultimately that group opposed to Medicaid expansion prevailed.
Both Medicaid expansion and the health insurance marketplace exchange are components of the Affordable Care Act, known by some as Obamacare.
A little history of the ACA might be helpful.
Under the original ACA legislation passed in 2010, the intent was that states would be required to expand Medicaid. But the U.S. Supreme Court in a ruling upholding the constitutionality of the ACA said that states could not be forced to expand Medicaid.
Under the original intent of the ACA before the Supreme Court ruling, people up to 138% of the federal poverty level (about $20,500 annually for an individual) would receive health insurance via Medicaid expansion. Those above 138% of the federal poverty level who did not have insurance through their employers could purchase insurance on the exchange with the help of federal subsidies.
But the Supreme Court ruling changed the ACA. After the Supreme Court ruling, states could not be forced to expand Medicaid but people between 100% and 138% of the federal poverty level could purchase insurance on the exchange in states, like Mississippi, that did not expand Medicaid. And federal subsidies would be available to help people with lower income with the cost of purchasing a policy through the exchange.
Those subsidies were substantially enhanced under legislation passed in recent years under Biden. For people below 150% of the federal poverty level, thanks to the Biden legislation, they can receive a policy with no monthly premiums opposed to having to pay roughly 2% of their annual income as they had to under the original ACA. Plus, out-of-pocket expenses and deductibles are much lower under the Biden legislation than under the original ACA, though there are still out-of-pocket expenses and deductibles that make the policies cost prohibitive for many low income people. But regardless, those enhanced subsidies, which were cited by Reeves and others as a reason not to expand Medicaid, are slated to end at the end of 2025.
Importantly, under the ACA after the Supreme Court ruling, those earning less than 100% of the federal poverty level are out of luck in states like Mississippi that have not expanded Medicaid because they are not eligible to get coverage through the exchange.
If Mississippi continues to be among the minority of states not expanding Medicaid, the only hope for those under 100% of the federal poverty level is that the Congress and president, whomever that might be, will provide them some type of relief.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
A Mississippi town moves a Confederate monument that became a shrouded eyesore
GRENADA (AP) โ A Mississippi town has taken down a Confederate monument that stood on the courthouse square since 1910 โ a figure that was tightly wrapped in tarps the past four years, symbolizing the community’s enduring division over how to commemorate the past.
Grenada’s first Black mayor in two decades seems determined to follow through on the city’s plans to relocate the monument to other public land. A concrete slab has already been poured behind a fire station about 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) from the square.
But a new fight might be developing. A Republican lawmaker from another part of Mississippi wrote to Grenada officials saying she believes the city is violating a state law that restricts the relocation of war memorials or monuments.
The Grenada City Council voted to move the monument in 2020, weeks after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. The vote seemed timely: Mississippi legislators had just retired the last state flag in the U.S. that prominently featured the Confederate battle emblem.
The tarps went up soon after the vote, shrouding the Confederate soldier and the pedestal he stood on. But even as people complained about the eyesore, the move was delayed by tight budgets, state bureaucracy or political foot-dragging. Explanations vary, depending on who’s asked.
A new mayor and city council took office in May, prepared to take action. On Sept. 11, with little advance notice, police blocked traffic and a work crew disassembled and removed the 20-foot (6.1-meter) stone structure.
“I’m glad to see it move to a different location,” said Robin Whitfield, an artist with a studio just off Grenada’s historic square. “This represents that something has changed.”
Still, Whitfield, who is white, said she wishes Grenada leaders had invited the community to engage in dialogue about the symbol, to bridge the gap between those who think moving it is erasing history and those who see it as a daily reminder of white supremacy. She was among the few people watching as a crane lifted parts of the monument onto a flatbed truck.
“No one ever talked about it, other than yelling on Facebook,” Whitfield said.
Mayor Charles Latham said the monument has been “quite a divisive figure” in the town of 12,300, where about 57% of residents are Black and 40% are white.
“I understand people had family and stuff to fight and die in that war, and they should be proud of their family,” Latham said. “But you’ve got to understand that there were those who were oppressed by this, by the Confederate flag on there. There’s been a lot of hate and violence perpetrated against people of color, under the color of that flag.”
The city received permission from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to move the Confederate monument, as required. But Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes of Picayune said the fire station site is inappropriate.
“We are prepared to pursue such avenues that may be necessary to ensure that the statue is relocated to a more suitable and appropriate location,” she wrote, suggesting a Confederate cemetery closer to the courthouse square as an alternative. She said the Ladies Cemetery Association is willing to deed a parcel to the city to make it happen.
The Confederate monument in Grenada is one of hundreds in the South, most of which were dedicated during the early 20th century when groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy sought to shape the historical narrative by valorizing the Lost Cause mythology of the Civil War.
The monuments, many of them outside courthouses, came under fresh scrutiny after an avowed white supremacist who had posed with Confederate flags in photos posted online killed nine Black people inside the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Grenada’s monument includes images of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and a Confederate battle flag. It was engraved with praise for “the noble men who marched neath the flag of the Stars and Bars” and “the noble women of the South,” who “gave their loved ones to our country to conquer or to die for truth and right.”
A half-century after it was dedicated, the monument’s symbolism figured in a voting rights march. When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders held a mass rally in downtown Grenada in June 1966, Robert Green of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference scrambled up the pedestal and planted a U.S. flag above the image of Davis.
The cemetery is a spot Latham himself had previously advocated as a new site for the monument, but he said it’s too late to change now, after the city already budgeted $60,000 for the move.
“So, who’s going to pay the city back for the $30,000 we’ve already expended to relocate this?” he said. “You should’ve showed up a year and a half ago, two years ago, before the city gets to this point.”
A few other Confederate monuments in Mississippi have been relocated. In July 2020, a Confederate soldier statue was moved from a prominent spot at the University of Mississippi to a Civil War cemetery in a secluded part of the Oxford campus. In May 2021, a Confederate monument featuring three soldiers was moved from outside the Lowndes County Courthouse in Columbus to another cemetery with Confederate soldiers.
Lori Chavis, a Grenada City Council member, said that since the monument was covered by tarps, “it’s caused nothing but more divide in our city.”
She said she supports relocating the monument but worries about a lawsuit. She acknowledged that people probably didn’t know until recently exactly where it would reappear.
“It’s tucked back in the woods, and it’s not visible from even pulling behind the fire station,” Chavis said. “And I think that’s what got some of the citizens upset.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Crooked Letter Sports Podcast
Podcast: New Orleans sports columnist and author Jeff Duncan joins the podcast to talk about his new Steve Gleason book and the new-look New Orleans Saints.
Jeff Duncan went from the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson on Saturday to Jerry World in Dallas on Sunday where he watched and wrote about the Saints’ total dismantling of the Dallas Cowboys. We talk about both events and also about what happened in high school and college football last weekend and what’s coming up this weekend.
Stream all episodes here.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1899
Sept. 18, 1899
Scott Joplin, known as โthe King of Ragtime,โ copyrighted the โMaple Leaf Rag,โ which became the first song to sell more than 1 million copies of sheet music. The popularity launched a sensation surrounding ragtime, which has been called America’s โfirst classical music.โย
Born near Texarkana, Texas, Joplin grew up in a musical family. He worked on the railroad with other family members until he was able to earn money as a musician, traveling across the South. He wound up playing at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, where he met fellow musician Otis Saunders, who encouraged him to write down the songs he had been making up to entertain audiences. In all, Joplin wrote dozens of ragtime songs.
After some success, he moved to New York City, hoping he could make a living while stretching the boundaries of music. He wrote a ragtime ballet and two operas, but success in these new forms eluded him. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in New York City in 1917.
More than six decades later, his music was rediscovered, initially by Joshua Rifkin, who recorded Joplin’s songs on a record, and then Gunther Schuller of the New England Conservatory, who performed four of the ragtime songs in concert: โMy faculty, many of whom had never even heard of Joplin, were saying things like, โMy gosh, he writes melodies like Schubert!’โ
Joplin’s music won over even more admirers through the 1973 movie, โThe Sting,โ which won an Oscar for the music. His song, โThe Entertainer,โ reached No. 3 on Billboard and was ranked No. 10 among โSongs of the Centuryโ list by the Recording Industry Association of America. His opera โTreemonishaโ was produced to wide acclaim, and he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his special contribution to American music.ย
โThe ragtime craze, the faddish thing, will obviously die down, but Joplin will have his position secure in American music history,โ Rifkin said. โHe is a treasurable composer.โ
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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