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Former Gov. Steve Beshear: Medicaid expansion changed course of Kentucky history

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When former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear took office in 2007, the Bluegrass State had many challenges — not the least of which was lack of health care for working folks — and limited resources to address them.

“Kentucky faced a number of fundamental weaknesses, not unlike Mississippi and a lot of other Southern states,” Beshear recently told Mississippi Today. “We had a lack of educational attainment. We had a workforce that wasn’t as trained or agile as the marketplace would demand. We had too many children getting a poor start in life. We had an economy that wasn’t as diversified as it needed to be. And one of the biggest fundamental weaknesses we had was a population that wasn’t healthy.”

“… Governors have a lot of power and a lot of resources at their disposal, but none of us really have the resources locally to make a huge difference in the health of your people,” Beshear said. “We made progress in health care, from 2007 to 2010, but we couldn’t really make any huge changes. Then along came the Affordable Care Act.”

Kentucky, starting in 2014, accepted federal funding to expand Medicaid and has been one of the most successful states in using the ACA to reduce its number of uninsured people. Its creation of a state-run health insurance marketplace has been held as a national role model.

Mississippi Today has interviewed governors in the three Southern states that have expanded Medicaid: Arkansas, Louisiana and Kentucky, all of whom report net positives from the move. Despite numerous polls showing public support for expansion, Mississippi remains one of 10 states rejecting federal money for expansion, led now by Gov. Tate Reeves who has remained steadfastly opposed.

READ MORE‘A no-brainer’: Why former Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe successfully pushed Medicaid expansion

READ MORE: Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards: Medicaid expansion ‘easiest big decision I ever made’

Beshear, whose son Andy Beshear is now governor and running for reelection this year, expanded Medicaid by a 2013 executive order. He said Medicaid expansion far exceeded initial projections in number of jobs created, money injected into hospitals, the state’s economy and state budget. The number of uninsured Kentuckians dropped from over 20% to 7.5%. The net positive impact on Kentucky’s economy was $30 billion over eight years.

“Medicaid expansion was the single-most important decision I made in eight years as governor because we changed the course of Kentucky’s history,” Beshear said.

Beshear’s interview with Mississippi Today is below, edited for brevity.

Mississippi Today: Could you give us a quick overview of where things stood in Kentucky in 2013, both health-care wise and politically?

Gov. Steve Beshear: It was estimated that some 640,000 Kentuckians, out of a little over 4 million, had no access to affordable, quality health care. These were folks who would get up every morning and go to work, and just basically roll the dice — just hoping and praying that you don’t get sick or get hurt. They were having to choose between food and medicine at times. They would have to ignore checkups that could catch serious conditions early. They just lived every day knowing that bankruptcy was just one bad diagnosis away.

… Fixing this is an expensive proposition, and a state by itself is just simply not in a position to address it … The Affordable Care Act was passed, and of course immediately became embroiled in litigation. My health care people came to me and we sat down and talked through what it allowed. We realized we had two decisions to make. One was, do we create a state-based exchange or do we go into the federal exchange. And two, do we expand Medicaid.

The first decision was a pretty easy one because basically all of our providers and folks who would be involved felt that we needed to have more flexibility and be able to address Kentucky’s particular needs with a state-based exchange … Ours became sort of the national standard, the gold standard for state-based exchanges … President Obama called me personally to congratulate us and thank us for showing the world that the Affordable Care Act can work.

… Whether to expand Medicaid was a tougher decision. Morally, I felt that we needed to do it because I believe health care is a basic human right and that Kentuckians needed it. The question came down to can we afford it? The opponents of expanding and of the Affordable Care Act were all saying it would bankrupt us.

I felt like we needed to answer that question. I hired PricewaterhouseCoopers — an internationally renowned accounting firm — to come in and analyze what they felt would happen in Kentucky if we expanded Medicaid.

They took about six months and came back, sat down and looked at me across my desk and said, “Governor, you cannot afford not to do this.” Wow. OK. They said because over the next eight years, you’re going to create 17,000 new jobs. You’ll inject about $15 billion into Kentucky’s economy over the next eight years. You’ll protect Kentucky’s hospitals from the impact of cuts in indigent care funding and protect rural hospitals. And, you’ll have about an $800 million positive budget impact over the next eight years.

I was thrilled with that analysis, and we publicly announced that we were going to expand Medicaid as well as have our own state-based exchange. I was fortunate from a political standpoint that I did not have to have legislative approval. At that time I had a Democratic House and and Republican Senate and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, because of the politics surrounding quote-unquote Obamacare. Fortunately, years before, the Legislature had delegated the authority to define Medicaid eligibility under the federal law to our cabinet for Health and Family Services.

Mississippi Today: Did expansion live up to those early projections?

Beshear: The results were a little short of amazing. In the first six months, over 400,000 Kentuckians signed up … most of whom had never had affordable quality health care before. In the first 18 months, our uninsured rate dropped from over 20% to 7.5%. The uncompensated care rate dropped from 25% to less than 5%.

… But the critics would persist, particularly on the affordability of the program. So, after the first year, I went to Deloitte, another internationally known consulting firm, and said, OK, here’s the Pricewaterhouse study done before we implemented it. Take this and look at a year of actual results and numbers and tell me where we are. Were they right?

They did an in-depth study, came back, sat down across my desk, looked me in the eye and said, “Well, governor PricewaterhouseCoopers was wrong. They weren’t optimistic enough. They projected that you would create 17,000 new jobs over eight years. Yeah, you’ve already created 12,000 in the first year, and we project you’ll create 40,000 over eight years.” Wow, that was almost $3 billion in new revenue had gone to providers in the first 18 months. Then there’s a $30 billion positive impact on Kentucky’s economy over eight years … a net impact of $820 million impact on the state general fund over eight years.

Now, we haven’t had a totally smooth history since I was governor. After my eight years, I was followed by a Republican governor who had campaigned on repealing Medicaid expansion. During his four years, he did abolish the state-based exchange and pushed us into the federal exchange. He proposed a waiver to the federal government that would place a lot of complicated work requirements on folks on the Medicaid program. But, fortunately, a fellow named Andy Beshear, who happens to be my son, defeated him in the next election and he has reinstituted the state-based exchange and made it even stronger and just recently announced the expansion of Medicaid even further to cover dental and vision and hearing for adults.

Mississippi Today: What is your take on Mississippi and other states struggling with this issue, and any advice on what we should do?

Beshear: Mississippi is one of what, 10 states now that haven’t expanded? I would predict that the question is not if it ever will, it’s just when will it expand. Because this should not be a political issue. This should not be a partisan argument. Why does anybody want to argue that people shouldn’t have good quality health care?

A lot of the Southern states that are left, that have not expanded Medicaid, tend to fall at the bottom of the list in virtually every ranking that we have now. Sure, Kentucky has also been there, and is still there in some of the rankings, but we’re determined that we are going to move out of that category, instead of a state that’s continually trying to catch up.

This should be an easy decision, for either political party to make. It’s a matter quite honestly of putting people first and partisan politics second. When I was governor and I had to deal with a Republican Senate and Democratic House, I would tell them both, look, our elections are set up on a partisan basis. I understand that. We’ll get out there and fight and scratch and carry on in these elections, but once they’re over, we’re all Kentuckians first … That’s exactly the way I think Mississippi ought to approach an issue like this.

Throw out, throw away the partisan bickering and just look at what’s best for your people. It’s hard to argue that everybody having health care would not make life better for everybody. But there’s also sound evidence, that this is not only affordable for a state to do, this is economically beneficial for a state.

Mississippi Today: You’ve made points very similar to other governors we’ve talked with. They’ve said the decision was relatively easy, and believe it was a hallmark of their administrations.

Beshear: … It was an easy decision to make from the question of whether it was the right thing to do, or whether it would economically benefit Kentucky. It was a hard decision to make politically. In Kentucky at the time, President Obama had a 30% approval rating. Some of my advisors said, governor, do not touch the Affordable Care Act with a 10-foot pole, it will kill you.

But I felt, number one, how many times do you ever get to make a decision that will change the course of, change the history of your state for the good? You know that, and you can’t turn your back on that, you have to step up and do the right thing … Medicaid expansion was the single-most important decision I made in eight years as governor because we changed the course of Kentucky’s history.

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

Mississippi Today

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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Mississippi Legislature approves DEI ban after heated debate

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-02 16:34:00

Mississippi lawmakers have reached an agreement to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from public schools across the state education system, following the lead of numerous other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump’s administration.  

House and Senate lawmakers approved a compromise bill in votes on Tuesday and Wednesday. It will likely head to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his signature after it clears a procedural motion.

The agreement between the Republican-dominated chambers followed hours of heated debate in which Democrats, almost all of whom are Black, excoriated the legislation as a setback in the long struggle to make Mississippi a fairer place for minorities. They also said the bill could bog universities down with costly legal fights and erode academic freedom.

Democratic Rep. Bryant Clark, who seldom addresses the entire House chamber from the podium during debates, rose to speak out against the bill on Tuesday. He is the son of the late Robert Clark, the first Black Mississippian elected to the state Legislature since the 1800s and the first Black Mississippian to serve as speaker pro tempore and preside over the House chamber since Reconstruction.

“We are better than this, and all of you know that we don’t need this with Mississippi history,” Clark said. “We should be the ones that say, ‘listen, we may be from Mississippi, we may have a dark past, but you know what, we’re going to be the first to stand up this time and say there is nothing wrong with DEI.'”

Legislative Republicans argued that the measure — which will apply to all public schools from the K-12 level through universities — will elevate merit in education and remove a list of so-called “divisive concepts” from academic settings. More broadly, conservative critics of DEI say the programs divide people into categories of victims and oppressors and infuse left-wing ideology into campus life.

“We are a diverse state. Nowhere in here are we trying to wipe that out,” said Republican Sen. Tyler McCaughn, one of the bill’s authors. “We’re just trying to change the focus back to that of excellence.”

The House and Senate initially passed proposals that differed in who they would impact, what activities they would regulate and how they aim to reshape the inner workings of the state’s education system. Some House leaders wanted the bill to be “semi-vague” in its language and wanted to create a process for withholding state funds based on complaints that almost anyone could lodge. The Senate wanted to pair a DEI ban with a task force to study inefficiencies in the higher education system, a provision the upper chamber later agreed to scrap.

The concepts that will be rooted out from curricula include the idea that gender identity can be a “subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality.” The move reflects another effort to align with the Trump administration, which has declared via executive order that there are only two sexes.

The House and Senate disagreed on how to enforce the measure but ultimately settled on an agreement that would empower students, parents of minor students, faculty members and contractors to sue schools for violating the law.

People could only sue after they go through an internal campus review process and a 25-day period when schools could fix the alleged violation. Republican Rep. Joey Hood, one of the House negotiators, said that was a compromise between the chambers. The House wanted to make it possible for almost anyone to file lawsuits over the DEI ban, while Senate negotiators initially bristled at the idea of fast-tracking internal campus disputes to the legal system.   

The House ultimately held firm in its position to create a private cause of action, or the right to sue, but it agreed to give schools the ability to conduct an investigative process and potentially resolve the alleged violation before letting people sue in chancery courts.

“You have to go through the administrative process,” said Republican Sen. Nicole Boyd, one of the bill’s lead authors. “Because the whole idea is that, if there is a violation, the school needs to cure the violation. That’s what the purpose is. It’s not to create litigation, it’s to cure violations.” 

If people disagree with the findings from that process, they could also ask the attorney general’s office to sue on their behalf.

Under the new law, Mississippi could withhold state funds from schools that don’t comply. Schools would be required to compile reports on all complaints filed in response to the new law.

Trump promised in his 2024 campaign to eliminate DEI in the federal government. One of the first executive orders he signed did that. Some Mississippi lawmakers introduced bills in the 2024 session to restrict DEI, but the proposals never made it out of committee. With the national headwinds at their backs and several other laws in Republican-led states to use as models, Mississippi lawmakers made plans to introduce anti-DEI legislation.

The policy debate also unfolded amid the early stages of a potential Republican primary matchup in the 2027 governor’s race between State Auditor Shad White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. White, who has been one of the state’s loudest advocates for banning DEI, had branded Hosemann in the months before the 2025 session “DEI Delbert,” claiming the Senate leader has stood in the way of DEI restrictions passing the Legislature. 

During the first Senate floor debate over the chamber’s DEI legislation during this year’s legislative session, Hosemann seemed to be conscious of these political attacks. He walked over to staff members and asked how many people were watching the debate live on YouTube. 

As the DEI debate cleared one of its final hurdles Wednesday afternoon, the House and Senate remained at loggerheads over the state budget amid Republican infighting. It appeared likely the Legislature would end its session Wednesday or Thursday without passing a $7 billion budget to fund state agencies, potentially threatening a government shutdown.

“It is my understanding that we don’t have a budget and will likely leave here without a budget. But this piece of legislation …which I don’t think remedies any of Mississippi’s issues, this has become one of the top priorities that we had to get done,” said Democratic Sen. Rod Hickman. “I just want to say, if we put that much work into everything else we did, Mississippi might be a much better place.”

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

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House gives Senate 5 p.m. deadline to come to table, or legislative session ends with no state budget

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-02 16:13:00

The House on Wednesday attempted one final time to revive negotiations between it and the Senate over passing a state budget.

Otherwise, the two Republican-led chambers will likely end their session without funding government services for the next fiscal year and potentially jeopardize state agencies.

The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a measure to extend the legislative session and revive budget bills that had died on legislative deadlines last weekend. 

House Speaker Jason White said he did not have any prior commitment that the Senate would agree to the proposal, but he wanted to extend one last offer to pass the budget. White, a Republican from West, said if he did not hear from the Senate by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, his chamber would end its regular session. 

“The ball is in their court,” White said of the Senate. “Every indication has been that they would not agree to extend the deadlines for purposes of doing the budget. I don’t know why that is. We did it last year, and we’ve done it most years.” 

But it did not appear likely Wednesday afternoon that the Senate would comply.

The Mississippi Legislature has not left Jackson without setting at least most of the state budget since 2009, when then Gov. Haley Barbour had to force them back to set one to avoid a government shutdown.

The House measure to extend the session is now before the Senate for consideration. To pass, it would require a two-thirds majority vote of senators. But that might prove impossible. Numerous senators on both sides of the aisle vowed to vote against extending the current session, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann who oversees the chamber said such an extension likely couldn’t pass. 

Senate leadership seemed surprised at the news that the House passed the resolution to negotiate a budget, and several senators earlier on Wednesday made passing references to ending the session without passing a budget. 

“We’ll look at it after it passes the full House,” Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby said. 

The House and Senate, each having a Republican supermajority, have fought over many issues since the legislative session began early January.

But the battle over a tax overhaul plan, including elimination of the state individual income tax, appeared to cause a major rift. Lawmakers did pass a tax overhaul, which the governor has signed into law, but Senate leaders cried foul over how it passed, with the House seizing on typos in the Senate’s proposal that accidentally resembled the House’s more aggressive elimination plan.

The Senate had urged caution in eliminating the income tax, and had economic growth triggers that would have likely phased in the elimination over many years. But the typos essentially negated the triggers, and the House and governor ran with it.

The two chambers have also recently fought over the budget. White said he communicated directly with Senate leaders that the House would stand firm on not passing a budget late in the session. 

But Senate leaders said they had trouble getting the House to meet with them to haggle out the final budget. 

On the normally scheduled “conference weekend” with a deadline to agree to a budget last Saturday, the House did not show, taking the weekend off. This angered Hosemann and the Senate. All the budget bills died, requiring a vote to extend the session, or the governor forcing them into a special session.

If the Legislature ends its regular session without adopting a budget, the only option to fund state agencies before their budgets expire on June 30 is for Gov. Tate Reeves to call lawmakers back into a special session later. 

“There really isn’t any other option (than the governor calling a special session),” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann previously said. 

If Reeves calls a special session, he gets to set the Legislature’s agenda. A special session call gives an otherwise constitutionally weak Mississippi governor more power over the Legislature. 

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

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