Mississippi Today

How Medicaid expansion could have saved Tim’s leg — and changed his life

Published

3 years ago

November 14, 2022

How Medicaid expansion could have saved Tim’s leg — and changed his life

by Kate Royals, Mississippi Today
November 14, 2022

Note: This article is part of Mississippi Today’s ongoing Mississippi Health Care Crisis project. Read more about the project by clicking here.

Tim Floyd has never been one to sit still. 

After being forced to leave community college to move home to Guntown to help his mom pay the bills, he landed a job driving a truck in his early 20s. But three or four years later, he was diagnosed with sleep apnea, a dangerous condition for professional drivers because it can lead to fatigue and slow reactions when driving. Just like that, his truck driving career was over.

The health insurance that job had provided him abruptly disappeared — and his life has never been the same since.

“It made me no longer insurable to drive the truck, and that’s what led me down the path of not being able to find a job with health insurance and not being able to afford (private) insurance with the jobs I had,” said Floyd, now 46 years old.

Since then, Floyd has been trapped in what is called the "health insurance gap": he doesn't qualify for Mississippi's strict and limited Medicaid program, and he doesn't have private health insurance from an employer. He can't afford a private plan himself.

Meanwhile, over the past five years, Floyd's serious health problems have mounted. He’s been diagnosed with diabetes. He's lost part of his leg. He's battled cancer. He told Mississippi Today he’s sure he has medical debt, but he tries not to think about it: the past few years have just been about surviving each day.

Floyd’s conundrum is not unique in Mississippi. The state leads the nation in both rates of poverty and of uninsured people. Mississippi remains one of 12 states – and will likely soon be one of only 10 – not to accept federal dollars and provide health insurance to hundreds of thousands of Mississippians, many of them working poor.

Studies, including one from the state economist, have shown expanding Medicaid would cover up to about 230,000 Mississippians making up to 138% of the federal poverty level, or about $30,000 in annual income for a family of three. Floyd would have been covered under expanded Medicaid during the years he worked as a cashier and other low wage jobs, but because Mississippi never expanded, he wasn't.

The study also showed the state would save anywhere from $186 million to $207 million from 2022 through 2027 and create thousands of jobs.

Medicaid expansion has also been associated with reductions in mortality in addition to declines in medical debt, which is highest in the South and in lower-income communities. 

But both Speaker of the House Philip Gunn and Gov. Tate Reeves remain unwaveringly opposed to expansion. 

“Extending Medicaid to people who can’t afford health insurance would offer them and their families basic financial security to live a healthy life, that includes preventative care. Mississippians shouldn’t face financial ruin if they need health care or worry that a lack of preventative health care could cost them their lives,” said Roy Mitchell, executive director of the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program. 

After he lost the trucking job, Floyd then worked many other jobs – including multiple at one time – but never landed another that offered health insurance. 

The combination of jobs wasn’t enough to afford private insurance or pay out-of-pocket medical costs. So he remained uninsured and stopped going to the doctor. 

Six in 10 uninsured adults say they have postponed getting health care they needed due to cost, according to KFF. Uninsured adults are also more likely to report skipping recommended tests or treatment due to cost than adults with insurance. 

In 2012, that practice caught up to Floyd. He was working a construction job when a rock got stuck under his foot inside his boot and created a sore. He put some antibiotic ointment and a Bandaid on it and continued working. But six months later, the sore became infected and his foot swelled up. He used savings to go see a doctor, who referred him to a wound specialist. 

For the next five years, he battled that sore: he would treat it and stay off his feet for a month (which would sometimes cause him to lose whatever job he had at the time), the sore would heal, and he would go back to work. Then the whole cycle repeated again.

In 2017, a doctor suggested he have his blood sugar tested. So Floyd, again, dipped into his savings for a basic appointment and test. The results showed he was diabetic, and the sores were diabetic foot ulcers. The infection was now in his bones.   

There was only one option at that point: amputate his leg from the knee down. So again, just like that, his life changed. The charity program at North Mississippi Medical Center where he received his care covered the costs of the surgery, he said. Six months later, he was fitted for a prosthetic and began the process of rebuilding his strength and relearning how to do the things dear to him: basic things like walk, take care of the family’s dog, play the drums.

“It was hard. It was hard not only on me but on the people that cared about me,” he said. “Also, my emotional health wasn’t all that great … It took me about another year (after getting the prosthetic) to be able to walk unassisted – no cane or walker or nothing. Then, just building –  going from being pretty active to being very sedentary to trying to get active again took me another year from that before I got my stamina back up to where I could work.”

Tim Floyd, left, listens as his father, Macky Floyd, plays the guitar at their home in Guntown, Miss., Friday, Nov. 4, 2022.

The Tupelo hospital – a hub for health care and employment in north Mississippi – offers a financial assistance program for uninsured and underinsured patients like Floyd who need emergency or medically necessary care. The hospital and its subsidiaries spent over $190 million in fiscal year 2021 in charity care and uninsured discounts.

The hospital is situated in the district of Sen. Chad McMahan, a Republican who also lives in Floyd’s same small hometown of Guntown. McMahan drew criticism from Republican counterparts in 2021 when he indicated he was willing to discuss Medicaid expansion “and look at what (it) might look like.”

Today, he still maintains he sympathizes with people who work but are uninsured. He says he’s not for Medicaid expansion, per se, but does believe it should be discussed and that the health care system in Mississippi needs to be reformed.

“I think everything has to be on the table – whether or not we’re going to have Medicaid enhancements or Medicaid expansion or if we’re going to have a modernization of the way prices, menu prices, are put out from hospitals,” or how insurance companies operate, he said. 

McMahan said he regularly speaks with administrators at the hospital that employs nearly 9,000 people. 

“For the hospital system I represent, they have annual salaries of half a billion a year and then an annual income revenue stream of 1 billion-plus. Last year, they gave away 19% in charity,” he said. “… It’s unsustainable. In what other business can you give away 19% (and survive)?” 

Beyond the economics of Medicaid expansion and health care reform, McMahan, who grew up without health insurance as the son of a carpenter and a clerk, says he feels for Floyd and identifies with him.

“In the 9th grade I got hurt, and my parents didn’t have insurance … I remember seeing the fear in my family’s eyes and hearing discussions at the dinner table when my parents would be discussing what we were going to eliminate from the family budget that month to pay for the $20,000 hospital bill I had,” he said. 

“I’m sympathetic to him (Floyd) because I was like that myself … If we’re going to do any type of Medicaid overhaul, there has to be a work requirement. I’m not for anyone getting a public service unless they’re in a position to contribute.”

Tim Floyd plays the djembe drum at a festival in Amory, Miss. in 2021.

Finally recovered from losing his leg, Floyd started submitting job applications again in 2020 – right as the U.S. began reporting its first COVID-19 cases and the country subsequently shut down. 

Floyd, still uninsured and ineligible for disability, discovered a knot on his neck. He went to the doctor and was diagnosed with an ear infection and prescribed antibiotics. Floyd said the doctor didn’t mention any further testing. 

“You know, actually, most doctors that I’ve dealt with understand my situation. Because I am uninsured, they don’t even bring that stuff (additional testing) up,” he said about.

Over the next year, the lump got bigger. He returned to the same doctor, who at that time recommended a biopsy. The biopsy, which the hospital’s charity care program again covered, revealed he had stage II Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The oncologist told him if it had been diagnosed earlier, it would’ve been caught at stage I and required less rigorous treatment, he said.

He went through six weeks each of chemotherapy and radiation, which burned his vocal chords. Until now, his health conditions hadn’t kept him from his musical talents: singing and playing the drums in a band called Proximity Rule. But for a while, he couldn’t sing, and it was difficult to even speak.

Floyd, who has been in remission since May of 2021, is now on disability, which pays him about $800 a month. The cancer and amputated leg didn’t qualify him for the government assistance – but the later addition of a severe carpal tunnel diagnosis did. 

Looking back, he says, the logic of state leaders who have refused to expand Medicaid is baffling. 

“It would make a lot more sense to find people like me … and (give) them Medicaid for a short period of time to get back healthy so they can continue working and continue providing for their family ….,” he said. “Because if they don’t have health insurance, they don’t go to the doctor and get seen, eventually they’re gonna be just like me, and we’re on the hook for them for the rest of their life.”

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

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Mississippi Today

Coast judge upholds secrecy in politically charged case. Media appeals ruling.

Published

5 hours ago

July 14, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-07-14 10:30:00

by Anita Lee, Sun Herald and Taylor Vance, Mississippi Today
July 14, 2025

A Jackson County Chancery Court judge is denying the public access to a case that involves several politically connected Mississippians and their failed venture to ticket uninsured motorists using cameras and artificial intelligence.

Media companies Mississippi Today and the Sun Herald have filed for relief with the state Supreme Court, arguing that Chancery Judge Neil Harris improperly closed the court file without notice and a hearing to consider alternatives. The media outlets say the court file should be opened.

Mississippi Today in June filed its motion asking that Harris unseal the case, which he denied six days later.

Gulfport attorney Henry Laird writes in the media companies’ petition for state Supreme Court review, “The Chancery Court sealing the entire court file both before and after Mississippi Today’s motion to unseal the file violates the public and press’ cherished right of openness and access to its public court system and records.”

Mississippi judges have long followed a 1990 state Supreme Court decision that says, “A hearing must be held in which the press is allowed to intervene on behalf of the public and present argument, if any, against closure.”

Instead, Harris said he found no hearing necessary after reviewing the pleadings to open the file. The case, he said, is between two private companies.

“There are no public entities included as parties,” he wrote, “and there are no public funds at issue. Other than curiosity regarding issues between private parties, there is no public interest involved.”

The case involves what is usually a public function: Issuing tickets to the owners of uninsured vehicles. And, according to one party to the case, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety is owed $345,000 from the uninsured motorist program.

Since the entire court file is closed, the public is unable to see why the judge sealed the case. The Mississippians said in the Chancery Court case that they have “substantial” business interests to protect and “a lot of political importance,” an attorney opposing them said in a related federal case that is not sealed.

Jackson County Chancery Judge Neil Harris

Georgia-based Securix LLC signed up its first Mississippi client in 2021, the city of Ocean Springs, an agreement with the city showed. Securix developed a program that uses traffic cameras, artificial intelligence and bulk data on insured motorists to identify the owners of vehicles without insurance.

To sign on other Mississippi cities, Securix enlisted three well-known consultants, Quinton Dickerson, Josh Gregory and Robert Wilkinson. Dickerson and Gregory are Republican political operatives in Jackson who have run numerous state and local campaigns and advise many of the state’s top elected officials. Wilkinson, a Coast attorney, has represented local governments and government agencies, including the city of Ocean Springs.

MS business partnership sours

In 2023, the Mississippians formed QJR LLC. Their company entered a 50-50 partnership with Securix called Securix Mississippi.

Securix Mississippi sold the cities of Biloxi, Pearl and Senatobia on the uninsured driver program.

Fees collected from uninsured drivers were apportioned to the company, the cities and the Department of Public Safety, the operating agreement with Biloxi showed.

The citations offered three options, according to copies included in a federal lawsuit filed by three Mississippi residents who received them:

Call a toll-free number and provide proof of insurance.
Enter a diversion program that charges a $300 fee and includes a short online course and requires agreement that the vehicle will not be driven uninsured on public roadways.
Contest the ticket in court and risk $510 in fines and fees, plus the potential of a one-year driver’s license suspension.

The Securix Mississippi partnership soon soured.

Securix Chairman Jonathan Miller of Georgia said in a sworn court declaration submitted in the federal case that he was subjected around March 2024 to a “freeze out” by members and/or employees of QJR. They stopped giving him information, Miller said.

The Department of Public Safety in August pulled the plug on the controversial ticketing program, shutting off the company’s access to the insured driver database.

In September, QJR filed its Chancery Court lawsuit against Securix LLC.

What is known about the case comes from documents in the federal court file. QJR claims the company and its members have been defamed by Miller and Securix and wants their 50-50 business partnership dissolved.

The Chancery Court case does not even show up when the parties are searched for by name.

With a case number gleaned from the federal court file, a search of chancery records shows only that the case is under seal.

Normally, when a case is under seal, the docket would still be available. A docket lists all records and proceedings in a case. While sealed records are listed and described, they can’t be viewed.

“There is no court file,” attorney Laird said in asking the Supreme Court to review Judge Harris’ decision to leave the file sealed. “There is no docket sheet. There is absolutely no access on the part of the public or press to their public court file in this case.”

Judge closes file without public notice

All Mississippi court files are presumed open unless they are closed with notice and a hearing under guidelines established in the 1990 case Gannett River States Publishing Co. vs. Hand.

“It appears that the judge ignored what has been settled law in Mississippi since 1990,” said retired Jackson attorney Leonard Van Slyke, who represented Gannett in the case and still advises the media.

He added, “Since that time, there have not been many efforts to close a courtroom or a court file because the rules are pretty clear as to when that can be done. It is obvious from the rules that this would be a rare occurrence.”

A court file can be closed only if a party in the case requesting closure can show an “overriding interest” that would be prejudiced by publicity.

The Supreme Court said in 1990 that the public is entitled to at least 24 hours’ notice — on the court docket — before a judge considers closure. As a representative of the public, the media has a right to a hearing before a court file or proceeding is closed.

At the hearing, the judge must consider the least restrictive closure possible and reasonable alternatives. The judge also must make findings that explain why alternatives to closure were rejected.

The court wrote in Gannett vs. Hand:

“A transcript of the closure hearing should be made public and if a petition for extraordinary relief concerning a closure order is filed in this Court, it should be accompanied by the transcript, the court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law, and the evidence adduced at the hearing upon which the judge bases the findings and conclusions.”

Because Judge Harris held no hearing, the high court will have a scant record on which to base its review. Without a court record, Laird pointed out in his filing, the public can have no confidence the judge made a sound decision.

Kevin Goldberg, an attorney who serves as vice president and First Amendment expert at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Freedom Forum, said the First Amendment guarantees the public access to courts.

In the Securix case, he said, a private business was doing work normally performed by a police department or other public agency, and residents could be snared into legal proceedings when they received tickets and public funds were involved.

“These are not private people in a small town, going about their business,” Goldberg said. “These people’s business is the public’s business . . . I think that means they need to accept that they’re going to be scrutinized all the time, including when they voluntarily make a decision to go to court.”

This article was produced in partnership between the Sun Herald and Mississippi Today.

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

The post Coast judge upholds secrecy in politically charged case. Media appeals ruling. appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This article maintains a largely factual and investigative tone, focusing on government transparency, judicial procedure, and public access to court records. It critiques the secrecy upheld by a judge in a politically sensitive case involving private companies executing public functions, highlighting concerns about accountability and public interest. The framing leans slightly toward advocating for open government and media rights, values often associated with center-left perspectives. However, it stops short of overt ideological framing or partisan language, striving to report the facts and legal context while underscoring the public’s right to scrutiny.

Mississippi Today

Why Andy Gipson is running for governor

Published

9 hours ago

July 14, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @GeoffPender – 2025-07-14 06:30:00

by Geoff Pender and Taylor Vance, Mississippi Today
July 14, 2025

Republican Andy Gipson, the first candidate to publicly announce a run for Mississippi governor in 2027, outlines his five-plank platform. No. 1 is fighting crime, which Gipson says is rising in what were once quiet rural areas, because “If people don’t feel safe, nothing else matters.” He also offers a brief sampling of his baritone crooning from his just-released two studio albums.

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

The post Why Andy Gipson is running for governor appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Mississippi Today

‘Will you trust us?’: JPS plan for stricter cellphone policy makes some parents anxious

Published

3 days ago

July 11, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @mintamolly – 2025-07-11 15:25:00

by Molly Minta, Mississippi Today
July 11, 2025

Superintendent Errick Greene wanted to be very clear with the roughly 50 parents who attended Thursday night’s community listening session: Jackson Public Schools already has a policy banning students from using cellphones at school.

Aaliyah McIntyre, left, and her mother Ashley McIntyre attend a Jackson Public Schools listening session on July 10, 2025, about the district’s new policy on cellphone use. They raised concerns about how parents would be notified in the event of an emergency.

But the leadership of Mississippi’s third-largest school district has decided that a new approach is in order, citing a series of incidents in recent years involving students using their cellphones to bully others, organize fights or text their parents inaccurate information about violence happening at or near their school.

“To be clear, it’s not the majority of our scholars, but I can’t look at a class and know who’s gonna be bullying today, who’s gonna be scheduling a meetup to cut up today,” Greene said toward the end of the hour-long meeting held at the JPS board room. “I can’t look at a group of scholars and say, ‘OK, yeah, you’re the one, let me take your phone, the rest of you can keep it.’”

Under the rewritten policy, students who take their phone out of their backpacks during the instructional day will lose it for five days for the first infraction, 10 days for the second and 45 days for the third. Currently, the longest the school will hold a phone is 10 days.

The Jackson school board is expected to consider the new policy at its meeting next week and the district hopes to implement the change when the new school year starts later this month, said Sherwin Johnson, the district’s communications director.

Students also currently have the option to pay up to a $25 fine to get their phone back, but the district wants to rescind that aspect of the policy.

“We’ve discovered that’s not equitable,” said Larrisa Harris, the JPS general counsel. “Not everybody has the resources to come and pay the fine.”

Support for the new policy among the parents who spoke at the listening session varied, but all had questions. How will students access the internet on their laptops if the WiFi is spotty at their school and they need to use their cellphone hotspot? If students are required to keep their phones in their backpacks during lunch, how will teachers prevent stealing? How will JPS enforce the ban on using cellphones on the bus?

One mother said she watches her daughter’s location while she rides the bus to Jim Hill High School so she knows her daughter made it safely.

“If they can’t have it on the bus, who’s gonna enforce that?” she said. “I’m just gonna be real, the bus driver got to drive.”

A common theme among parents was anxiety at the prospect of losing direct contact with their kids in the event of an emergency. A Pew Research survey found that most adults, regardless of political affiliation, support cellphone bans in middle and high school classes. But those who don’t say it’s because their child can use their phone during emergencies.

“If something happened, will we get an automatic alert to notify us? Because a lot of the time we see things on social media first,” said Ashley McIntyre, a mother of three JPS students. She attended the meeting with her eldest daughter, Aaliyah, who recently graduated from Powell Middle School.

Though JPS does have an alert system for parents, McIntyre said she didn’t know if it existed. She cited a bomb threat at Powell last year that she found out about because Aaliyah texted her, not through a school alert.

“We didn’t know what was going on, and she texted me, ‘Mom, I’m scared,’ so I went up there,” McIntyre said. “So that puts us on edge.”

Aaliyah said she uses her phone to text her mom and watch TikTok, but she feels like her classmates use their phones to be popular or to fit in. When a fight happens, she said many students pull out their phones to record instead of trying to get an adult who can stop it. Then the videos end up on Instagram pages dedicated to posting fights in JPS.

“Once the principal found out about the fight pages, they came around looking inside our videos and camera rolls,” she said. “It happened to me last year. They thought I had a fight on my phone.”

Toward the end of the meeting, Laketia Marshall-Thomas, the assistant superintendent for high schools, took the mic to respond to one parent who said she was concerned that older students would not come to school if they knew their phone could be taken.

“What we have seen is, it’s the older students—” Marshall-Thomas began.

“They are the problem,” someone from the audience chimed in.

“We’re not saying they cannot have them,” she continued. “We know that they have after school activities and they need to communicate with their moms … but we have had major, major issues with cellphones and issues that have even resulted in criminal outcomes for our scholars, but most importantly, our students … have experienced a lot of learning loss.”

While the district leadership did not go into detail about the criminal incidents, several pointed to instances where students have texted their parents inaccurate information, such as an unsubstantiated rumor there was a gun during a fight at Callaway High School or that a shooting outside Whitten Middle School occurred on school property.

“Having phones actually creates far more chaos than they help anyone,” Greene said.

While cellphones have been banned to varying degrees in U.S. schools for decades, youth mental health concerns have renewed interest in more widespread bans across the country. Cellphone and social media usage among school-aged kids is linked to negative mental health outcomes and instances of cyberbullying, research shows.

At least 11 states restrict or ban cellphone use in schools. After Mississippi’s youth mental health task force recommended that all school districts implement policies that limited cellphone and social media usage in classrooms, a bill that would’ve required school boards to create cellphone policies died during the legislative session. Still, several Mississippi school districts have passed their own policies, including Marshall County and Madison County.

Another concern about the ban was a belief among a couple of speakers at the meeting that cellphones can help parents hold the district accountable for misdeeds it may want to hide.

“I just saw a video today. It was not in JPS, but it was a child being yelled at by the teacher and had he not recorded it, his momma would have never known that this sweet lady that they go to church with is degrading her child like that,” one mother said.

Statements like these prompted responses from teachers and other parents who urged the skeptical attendees to be more trusting or to make sure the district has updated contact information for them in case school officials need to reach parents during an emergency.

“I think we have to trust the people watching over our children,” said one of the few fathers who spoke. “When I grew up, what the teacher said was gold.”

One teacher asked the audience, “Will you trust us?”

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

The post ‘Will you trust us?’: JPS plan for stricter cellphone policy makes some parents anxious appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The article presents a balanced report on Jackson Public Schools’ proposed stricter cellphone policy without taking a clear ideological stance. It fairly conveys the perspectives of school officials emphasizing discipline and safety, alongside parental concerns about communication and emergency access. The tone remains neutral, focusing on factual details such as policy changes, reasons behind them, and community reactions. While it includes some skepticism from parents and responses from district staff, the language does not endorse or oppose either side. Overall, the coverage adheres to neutral, factual reporting by presenting multiple viewpoints without editorializing.