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Despite Gov. Reeves’ debate claims, experts say it’s hard to argue that states are ‘better off’ without Medicaid expansion

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Gov. Tate Reeves, the state’s most powerful opponent of Medicaid expansion, repeated a familiar claim at Wednesday night’s gubernatorial debate: that the program wouldn’t save the state’s failing hospitals.

But health care experts say that was always clear, that the governor’s argument is missing an understanding of the challenges facing the state’s health care system and that expansion, by potentially insuring about a quarter million Mississippians, would allow hospitals to get paid something for the care they provide to uninsured patients versus getting paid nothing.

The first and only debate between Reeves and Democratic challenger Brandon Presley ahead of the Nov. 7 election opened Wednesday night with questions about Medicaid expansion, which has remained a title issue of the campaign cycle.

Mississippi is one of just 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid. Though most Mississippians support the policy, the governor has remained steadfast in his opposition.

READ MORE: FAQ: What is Medicaid expansion, really?

“Medicaid is not the best policy for rural hospitals, but you don’t have to look very far to prove that,” Reeves said at the debate, before citing data from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform’s rural hospital report about Louisiana and Arkansas, two Southern states that have expanded Medicaid.

The center’s most recent version of the report, which was updated last month, shows that Louisiana and Arkansas still have high rates of rural hospitals at risk of closure — 42% and 43%, respectively.

According to the report, 42% of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure.

“Guess what? The difference is… Louisiana and Arkansas have expanded Medicaid,” Reeves continued. “Mississippi has not. (Medicaid expansion) is not the financial windfall that Brandon Presley would have you believe.”

READ MORE: Brandon Presley again vows to expand Medicaid as Gov. Tate Reeves reiterates opposition

The heart of Reeves’ argument misses some major points, experts said.

“To say that other states that expanded have had the same problems is a very true statement,” said Ryan Kelly, executive director of the Mississippi Rural Health Association. “But would they be worse off without (Medicaid expansion) in the current environment? Yes, I think they would be.”

According to the center’s report, the average percentage of rural hospitals at risk of closure in non-expansion states is over 37%, while the percentage in expansion states is much lower at 26%.

“What [Reeves is] saying is true,” said Harold Miller, leader of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. “Those are the numbers.”

However, expansion is about more than just “saving” hospitals, Miller said — it’s about insuring vulnerable people, allowing them to receive regular health care.

While emergency rooms cannot turn down patients regardless of their insurance status, doctor’s offices can, preventing people from receiving preventative and other non-urgent forms of health care.

Somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 Mississippians would be affected by Medicaid expansion, according to projections. The policy would potentially bring in billions within its first few years of implementation in Mississippi, an influx of cash that the state needs. Just minutes later during the same debate, Reeves touched on Mississippi’s economy, and the “competitive disadvantage” the state’s up against when it comes to economic development.

Miller said hospitals in states that have expanded Medicaid do have greater losses on Medicaid services — Medicaid typically reimburses hospitals at lower rates than commercial insurance for health care services.

Reeves used that argument during the debate.

“The unintended consequence of expanding Medicaid to 300,000 Mississippians is moving individuals off of private insurance,” he said. “That’s bad for rural hospitals as well, because the fact is that when you move them from private insurance, the reimbursement rates… are actually lower when they go on Medicaid.”

But that’s better than not getting paid at all, according to Kelly.

Hospitals report losing about $600 million on uncompensated care annually, or services provided to people who aren’t insured. That number would reduce drastically if Medicaid was expanded.

Experts agree that the hospital crisis, while heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, has been caused by a multitude of factors. In the same vein, it won’t be solved by one policy.

Kelly cited all of the other challenges hospitals are up against, including timely insurance reimbursements and rising health care costs, but he conceded that expansion would aid hospitals’ uncompensated care losses, an issue that’s fueling the crisis.

“You’re going to have a real hard time finding someone who would say hospitals would be better off without Medicaid expansion,” Kelly said.

READ MORE: ‘It is a moral obligation’: Faith leaders, advocates, doctors cite Christianity as reason to expand Medicaid

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

A win for press freedom: Judge dismisses Gov. Phil Bryant’s lawsuit against Mississippi Today

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mississippitoday.org – @GanucheauAdam – 2025-04-04 13:35:00

Madison County Circuit Court Judge Bradley Mills dismissed former Gov. Phil Bryant’s defamation lawsuit against Mississippi Today on Friday, ending a nearly two-year case that became a beacon in the fight for American press freedom.

For the past 22 months, we’ve vigorously defended our Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting and our characterizations of Bryant’s role in the Mississippi welfare scandal. We are grateful today that the court, after careful deliberation, dismissed the case.

The reporting speaks for itself. The truth speaks for itself.

This judgment is so much more than vindication for Mississippi Today — it’s a monumental victory for every single Mississippian. Journalism is a public good that all of us deserve and need. Too seldom does our state’s power structure offer taxpayers true government accountability, and Mississippians routinely learn about the actions of their public officials only because of journalism like ours. This reality is precisely why we launched our newsroom nine years ago, and it’s why we devoted so much energy and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending ourselves against this lawsuit. It was an existential threat to our organization that took time and resources away from our primary responsibilities — which is often the goal of these kinds of legal actions. But our fight was never just about us; it was about preserving the public’s sacred, constitutional right to critical information that journalists provide, just as our nation’s Founding Fathers intended.

Mississippi Today remains as committed as ever to deep investigative journalism and working to provide government accountability. We will never be afraid to reveal the actions of powerful leaders, even in the face of intimidation or the threat of litigation. And we will always stand up for Mississippians who deserve to know the truth, and our journalists will continue working to catalyze justice for people in this state who are otherwise cheated, overlooked, or ignored.

We appreciate your support, and we are honored to serve you with the high quality, public service journalism you’ve come to expect from Mississippi Today.

READ MORE: Judge Bradley Mills’ order dismissing the case

READ MORE: Mississippi Today’s brief in support of motion to dismiss

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Meet Willye B. White: A Mississippian we should all celebrate

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mississippitoday.org – @rick_cleveland – 2025-04-04 11:09:00

In an interview years and years ago, the late Willye B. White told me in her warm, soothing Delta voice, “A dream without a plan is just a wish. As a young girl, I had a plan.”

She most definitely did have a plan. And she executed said plan, as we shall see.

And I know what many readers are thinking: “Who the heck was Willye B. White?” That, or: “Willye B. White, where have I heard that name before?”

Rick Cleveland

Well, you might have driven an eight-mile, flat-as-a-pancake stretch of U.S. 49E, between Sidon and Greenwood, and seen the marker that says: “Willye B. White Memorial Highway.” Or you might have visited the Olympic Room at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and seen where White was a five-time participant and two-time medalist in the Summer Olympics as a jumper and a sprinter.

If you don’t know who Willye B. White was, you should. Every Mississippian should. So pour yourself a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea, follow along and prepare to be inspired.

Willye B. White was born on the last day of 1939 in Money, near Greenwood, and was raised by grandparents. As a child, she picked cotton to help feed her family. When she wasn’t picking cotton, she was running, really fast, and jumping, really high and really long distances.

She began competing in high school track and field meets at the age of 10. At age 11, she scored enough points in a high school meet to win the competition all by herself. At age 16, in 1956, she competed in the Summer Olympics at Melbourne, Australia.

Her plan then was simple. The Olympics, on the other side of the world, would take place in November. “I didn’t know much about the Olympics, but I knew that if I made the team and I went to the Olympics, I wouldn’t have to pick cotton that year. I was all for that.”

Just imagine. You are 16 years old, a high school sophomore, a poor Black girl. You are from Money, Mississippi, and you walk into the stadium at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds to compete before a crowd of more than 100,000 strangers nearly 10,000 miles from your home.

She competed in the long jump. She won the silver medal to become the first-ever American to win a medal in that event. And then she came home to segregated Mississippi, to little or no fanfare. This was the year after Emmett Till, a year younger than White, was brutally murdered just a short distance from where she lived.

“I used to sit in those cotton fields and watch the trains go by,” she once told an interviewer. “I knew they were going to some place different, some place into the hills and out of those cotton fields.”

Her grandfather had fought in France in World War I. “He told me about all the places he saw,” White said. “I always wanted to travel and see the places he talked about.”

Travel, she did. In the late 1950s there were two colleges that offered scholarships to young, Black female track and field athletes. One was Tuskegee in Alabama, the other was Tennessee State in Nashville. White chose Tennessee State, she said, “because it was the farthest away from those cotton fields.”

She was getting started on a track and field career that would take her, by her own count, to 150 different countries across the globe. She was the best female long jumper in the U.S. for two decades. She competed in Olympics in Melbourne, Rome, Tokyo, Mexico City and Munich. She would compete on more than 30 U.S. teams in international events. In 1999, Sports Illustrated named her one of the top 100 female athletes of the 20th century.

Chicago became White’s home for most of adulthood. This was long before Olympic athletes were rich, making millions in endorsements and appearance fees. She needed a job, so she became a nurse. Later on, she became an public health administrator as well as a coach. She created the Willye B. White Foundation to help needy children with health and after school care. 

In 1982, at age 42, she returned to Mississippi to be inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and was welcomed back to a reception at the Governor’s Mansion by Gov. William Winter, who introduced her during induction ceremonies. Twenty-six years after she won the silver medal at Melbourne, she called being hosted and celebrated by the governor of her home state “the zenith of her career.”

Willye B. White died of pancreatic cancer in a Chicago hospital in 2007. While working on an obituary/column about her, I talked to the late, great Ralph Boston, the three-time Olympic long jump medalist from Laurel. They were Tennessee State and U.S. Olympic teammates. They shared a healthy respect from one another, and Boston clearly enjoyed talking about White.

At one point, Ralph asked me, “Did you know Willye B. had an even more famous high school classmate.”

No, I said, I did not.

“Ever heard of Morgan Freeman?” Ralph said, laughing.

Of course.

“I was with Morgan one time and I asked him if he ever ran track,” Ralph said, already chuckling about what would come next.

“Morgan said he did not run track in high school because he knew if he ran, he’d have to run against Willye B. White, and Morgan said he didn’t want to lose to a girl.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Early voting proposal killed on last day of Mississippi legislative session

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-03 13:02:00

Mississippi will remain one of only three states without no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting. 

Senate leaders, on the last day of their regular 2025 session, decided not to send a bill to Gov. Tate Reeves that would have expanded pre-Election Day voting options. The governor has been vocally opposed to early voting in Mississippi, and would likely have vetoed the measure.

The House and Senate this week overwhelmingly voted for legislation that established a watered-down version of early voting. The proposal would have required voters to go to a circuit clerk’s office and verify their identity with a photo ID. 

The proposal also listed broad excuses that would have allowed many voters an opportunity to cast early ballots. 

The measure passed the House unanimously and the Senate approved it 42-7. However, Sen. Jeff Tate, a Republican from Meridian who strongly opposes early voting, held the bill on a procedural motion. 

Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England chose not to dispose of Tate’s motion on Thursday morning, the last day the Senate was in session. This killed the bill and prevented it from going to the governor. 

England, a Republican from Vancleave, told reporters he decided to kill the legislation because he believed some of its language needed tweaking. 

The other reality is that Republican Gov. Tate Reeves strongly opposes early voting proposals and even attacked England on social media for advancing the proposal out of the Senate chamber. 

England said he received word “through some sources” that Reeves would veto the measure.

“I’m not done working on it, though,” England said. 

Although Mississippi does not have no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting, it does have absentee voting. 

To vote by absentee, a voter must meet one of around a dozen legal excuses, such as temporarily living outside of their county or being over 65. Mississippi law doesn’t allow people to vote by absentee purely out of convenience or choice. 

Several conservative states, such as Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida, have an in-person early voting system. The Republican National Committee in 2023 urged Republican voters to cast an early ballot in states that have early voting procedures. 

Yet some Republican leaders in Mississippi have ardently opposed early voting legislation over concerns that it undermines election security. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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