Note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a new platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

Patients frequently show up in the emergency room at Neshoba General in Philadelphia without any health insurance.

Sometimes the issue is a bad cold, a cough or a fever — common illnesses that will go away over time, though treatment by a healthcare professional could ease symptoms. Many times, the diagnosis is much more complicated because of delayed care.

Almost all the time, the person who needs our help has a job (or two).

Last year, the Legislature filed a conference report which would have made Mississippi the 41st state to expand Medicaid, creating a payor source for patients like these. Though it did not pass, six influential lawmakers, including House Medicaid Chair Missy McGee and Senate Medicaid Chair Kevin Blackwell, signed off on the report.

Included in the language was a work requirement, with exceptions for full and part-time students, caregivers of non-school age children and others. In his first term, President Trump’s administration approved such requirements and is likely to approve them again. Under the bill, the state would not be saddled with additional financial obligations. Instead, managed care companies who stand to benefit from expansion would pay for it.

All in all, Mississippi got closer to a compromise on Medicaid expansion during the 2024 legislative session than we ever have before.

The state’s decision not to expand has been expensive for us. Federal law requires hospitals participating in Medicare and offering emergency services to screen and treat patients regardless of whether they can pay for services. Any other business forced to provide goods and services to customers who cannot pay would close.

It has also been expensive for the state. Mississippi’s labor force participation rate is usually the lowest, or next to the lowest, in the nation. When people are not healthy, they are not working. We all know the domino effect from there: less taxpaying citizens, less business growth, less economic viability, more government dependency. 

The biggest issue, though, is the personal impact not expanding Medicaid has on our friends and neighbors in Mississippi.

People who present in our emergency rooms without insurance are most always people we know in our community. They face tough decisions every day about how to use limited resources. Paying for childcare or groceries, for example, means forgoing preventative services or delaying life-saving treatment.

While the substantial increases in federal MHAP supplemental payments (funded by a tax on hospitals) have helped stabilize hospitals, the program is fragile and subject to annual renewal. More importantly, none of those funds go to help individuals under 138% of the federal poverty level (those earning about $21,600 annually) procure health insurance.

We are so thankful for the Legislature’s significant efforts and pray the conversation about Medicaid expansion continues this year. The state needs expansion to grow our work force and thrive. Hospitals, particularly in rural areas, need expansion to survive.

However, hard-working Mississippians holding down low-wage jobs that are crucial to our economy are the ones who need — and deserve — it the most.

Lee McCall is CEO of the Neshoba General Hospital in Philadelphia and chair of the Mississippi Hospital Association.

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

Jan. 28, 1963

Harvey Gantt became the first Black student at Clemson University in South Carolina, the last state to hold out against court-ordered desegregation. 

After graduating second in his class from Burke High School in Charleston in 1960, he studied architecture at Iowa State University and began to fight a legal battle to attend Clemson, which he won. Nine months later, Lucinda Brawley became the first Black woman to attend. A year later, they married. 

Gantt graduated with honors in 1965, receiving a bachelor’s degree in architecture and later a master’s in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He moved to Charlotte and co-founded an architectural firm with Jeff Huberman. Their firm developed some of the city’s most iconic landmarks, including the Johnson C. Smith University Science Center. He also broke down barriers, becoming the city’s first Black mayor in 1983. Three years later, he became a fellow in the American Institute of Architects, the highest honor given to an architect. 

Gantt continued to be active in civil rights, collaborating with activist Floyd B. McKissick to design Soul City, an experimental interracial community. In 1990, he ran against U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms and was leading in the polls against the politician who had backed racial segregation, filibustered against the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and once called the University of North Carolina the “University of Negroes and Communists.” 

“Every race I’ve been in,” Gantt said, “I calculated race into the equation. If you’re in America, you calculate it into the equation. It is a factor. I never make it an issue. I don’t run the campaign wearing it on my sleeve, but I don’t run away from it either.” 

Before the vote, Helms aired a commercial with a pair of white hands with the voiceover declaring, “You wanted this job, but because of a law they had to give it to a minority.” 

He won with 52.5 percent of the vote. 

Today, the African-American Center for Arts+Culture in Charlotte bears the name of Gantt, who continues to urge young people to “never give up on their dreams and vision to become somebody. We all possess the potential to become successful in life, and I challenge every student to settle for nothing less.”

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

More than a year after a state-appointed court in Jackson became law and lawsuits were dismissed challenging its appointments and other powers, the Capitol Complex Improvement District Court is now in business. 

Newly appointed Judge Stanley Alexander held court Monday morning. His fellow judicial appointee, James Holland, was also present in the court and offered some remarks and answered questions. 

“As you can tell, we’re working on the bugs,” Holland said about the court’s start. 

The first day of business was initial hearings for two people whom Capitol Police arrested over the weekend. 

The first was a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge. Alexander ordered the man from Madison released on personal recognizance. 

The second appearance was a simple domestic violence charge for a woman from Jackson. The public defender representing the woman said she was involved in a dispute with her former partner. She has no previous criminal record and is not a flight risk, her attorney said. 

Alexander set a $500 bond and set a condition for the woman not to have contact with the alleged male victim. The judge also approved an escort by Capitol Police to help her retrieve her belongings from the address she shared with the man. 

People charged with felonies are brought to the court from the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond, and those facing misdemeanors come from the Rankin County jail. 

Both defendants were brought from the Raymond jail, according to the jail docket. 

After court finished for the day, Holland answered questions from members of the public and courtwatchers. Danyelle Holmes, executive director of the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, asked whether there will be days or even a week’s wait for people before an initial appearance – something that has happened in Hinds County. 

“That’s not going to happen,” Alexander said.

Holland added that the CCID court is expected to take some of the case load off the county court system and prevent people from having to wait more than 48 hours for that hearing. The CCID court will conduct initial appearances for felonies each weekday morning. 

Once the CCID court sees someone for a first appearance for a felony or for revocation of bond, that is typically the end of its handling of the case. Later a case will be handled in county court, and conviction and sentencing would come from the circuit court. 

Like a municipal court, the CCID court can adjudicate misdemeanors, and it plans to hold trials for them on Thursdays. 

Although the law says someone convicted in the CCID court may be sent to the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility – a state prison, Holland said that is just an option available to the judges, and they want to do what’s appropriate for each defendant. 

The court will use Tuesdays for traffic offenses, but the judges aren’t expected to handle those cases until they are transitioned from being handled by the county court and once Capitol Police runs out of tickets with the previous court’s address printed on them, Holland said. 

Court fines will be forwarded to the city of Jackson.

All of the court’s cases are from Capitol Police, which patrols the district that encompasses downtown, areas around Jackson State University, Belhaven, Fondren and up to Northside Drive. Capitol Police also have concurrent jurisdiction throughout Jackson. 

Attorney General Lynn Fitch appointed Assistant Attorney General Donovan Mitchell and Canton lawyer Mike Ward as prosecutors for the CCID court. Ward handled a 2015 officer shooting case in Columbus that the AG’s office later declined to pursue. 

Monday was also the first day for volunteer court watchers trained by the MacArthur Justice Center. Director Cliff Johnson was there with Holmes. 

Johnson has spoken out publicly against the CCID and would have preferred support be given to the city of Jackson and its elected court system. But he was hopeful to see how willing officials who created the court were to consult a range of stakeholders and answer questions at the end of Monday’s court session. 

“There’s nothing to be gained by having a CCID court that’s anything other than excellent,” Johnson said. 

The court watchers, which include community organizations and law students, were trained across multiple sessions on criminal procedure, lingo, processes and how cases generally advance from arrest to indictment. 

The MacArthur Justice Center has monitored other courts across the state and seen misuse of cash bail, incarceration for unpaid court fines and fees and limited access to public defender services. Watchers want to ensure none of those practices take place in the CCID court, Johnson said. 

Volunteers are expected to be in court for the early days of the CCID court. They will keep count of information including numbers and share it online. 

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