Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann on Wednesday unveiled a $326 million tax cut package that reduces the state income tax and the sales tax on groceries and raises the gasoline tax to fund road work. 

The plan is more austere than the overhaul the House has proposed. That plan would eliminate the individual income tax in Mississippi over the next decade, raise sales taxes and create a new indexed gasoline tax. The House plan would be a net tax cut of $1.1 billion.

Flanked by Republican senators, Hosemann said the Senate plan would cut taxes over the next four years while allowing the Legislature to spend tax dollars on core government functions such as public education. 

“This needs to be sustainable,” Hosemann said. “A conservative approach to tax reform. Now, just to do things for one year doesn’t mean it’s sustainable. This needs to be sustainable.”

Senate leaders at a Wednesday press conference with Hosemann used the terms “measured, careful, cautious and responsible” when explaining details of the Senate plan.

Hosemann said the Senate plan would within four years reduce Mississippi’s individual income tax to 2.99%, the lowest rate in the nation of states that collect income taxes.

READ MORE: Speaker White frustrated by ‘crickets’ from Senate on tax plan

Legislation for the plan has not yet been filed, but if passed, the proposal would reduce the state’s 7% sales tax on grocery items to 5% in July 2026.

Municipalities currently receive a portion of the state tax collected from grocery sales. Hosemann said the Senate plan would make municipalities whole and allow them to collect the revenue they would typically receive from the state. 

The plan also raises the state’s 18.4-cents-a-gallon gasoline excise by three cents each year over the next three years, eventually resulting in a 27.4 cents per gallon gas tax at completion. The gas tax funds highway infrastructure maintenance and new infrastructure projects. The House plan would create a new 5% sales tax on top of the current excise, which at current rates would cost consumers more at the pump than the Senate plan.

Hosemann’s plan reduces the state’s flat 4% income tax to 2.99% over four years, a component that’s likely to set up a major debate with the House.

The announcement comes after the House passed a plan last month that eliminates the income tax over a decade, cuts the state grocery tax and raises sales taxes and gasoline taxes.

House Speaker Jason White, a Republican from West, has made income tax elimination his top priority this legislative session. He told reporters that even though there were a lot of differences between the House and Senate tax plans, he applauded the Senate for introducing a tax cut plan to allow the two chambers to potentially negotiate a final proposal. 

Last week, White had criticized Hosemann and the House for not having presented a detailed plan, and legislation, with the three-month legislative session nearing the midway point.

“I’m glad they’re in the ballgame,” White said of the Senate plan Wednesday. “They’re in the ballgame, so we’ve got a chance. Mississippians have a chance at a tax cut if the Senate’s in the game, so that’s a positive.”  

READ MORE: House passes $1.1 billion income tax elimination-gas and sales tax increase plan in bipartisan vote

Hosemann said he and his Senate leadership “took our time, to run proformas and make sure this works the way we intend it.”

If the Legislature passes a final tax cut plan, it will head to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves’ desk for consideration. Reeves has encouraged lawmakers to pass legislation to eliminate the income tax, but it remains unclear if he would sign a tax cut package into law that does not fully eliminate the income tax.

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

Panola County officials made an unorthodox demand of the county’s ambulance service last month: stop picking patients up from the hospital. 

Transfers from Progressive Health Batesville to higher-level care by the county’s ambulance services ground to a halt Jan. 20 after the Panola Board of Supervisors stopped the services, arguing that numerous transfers to far-off facilities have left county ambulances unavailable to respond to emergencies. 

They say the problem began in 2023 when the facility became a rural emergency hospital, a federal designation that gives struggling rural hospitals a $3.3 million federal funding boost but forces them to close their inpatient beds. Average patient stays are limited to 24 hours, necessitating transfers to larger facilities if a patient needs additional care. 

Experts say they have not seen the rural emergency hospital program provoke similar disputes in other areas, in part because the hospitals that chose to convert to the status had low inpatient volumes, meaning they likely have few patients to transfer. 

But Progressive Health of Batesville had a higher average daily inpatient census – by a factor of two – than any other hospital in the nation that became a rural emergency hospital, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid data.

Progressive Health of Batesville provided inpatient care to 12 people a day on average in 2022, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid data. Most hospitals that later converted to rural emergency status had an average daily inpatient census of two or fewer patients.

Batesville had a relatively high inpatient volume for a rural hospital, said Harold Miller, the director of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. Under the restrictions of the new model, many of these patients would need to be transferred to another facility to receive care.

Facing an ambulance contract increase of nearly a quarter of a million dollars to keep up with service volumes, Panola County officials want the hospital to foot a portion of the bill before they resume paying for transfers from the facility. 

This request sets a dangerous precedent for hospitals and could jeopardize patients’ safety, said Quentin Whitwell, the CEO of Oxford-based Progressive Health Group, the company that owns the hospital in Batesville, and five other hospitals across the Southeast.

“We do not believe this policy is warranted, we do not believe this policy is in the best interest of the patients and the community that we serve, and we do not believe this policy is legal,” Whitwell told Mississippi Today.

Transfer volumes from the hospital have increased just 5% from 2023 to 2024, according to a document Whitwell provided to Mississippi Today. 

Two other ambulance services – Priority Ambulance and Pafford EMS – are currently providing transfer services to the hospital. Lifeguard Ambulance Services, the company that contracts with the county, still delivers patients to Progressive Health of Batesville.

The Board of Supervisors and hospital management are in negotiations to resolve the conflict. 

Panola Medical Center – later renamed Progressive Health Batesville – was bankrupt in 2019 when Whitwell bought the hospital from Georgia-based Curae Health. 

But the hospital could not reach a financially sustainable inpatient census and its psychiatric unit was losing money, said Whitwell. It became a rural emergency hospital in November 2023, closing both services but maintaining an emergency room and outpatient care.

Experts say the choice to convert is a thorny one. It means the loss of acute inpatient care, a valued service that keeps people in their communities when they are sick or injured. But the federal subsidies can create renewed financial stability for hospitals that are struggling to keep their doors open. 

Nearly 200 hospitals have closed nationwide since 2005. And in Mississippi, 57% of rural hospitals are at risk of closing and 64% have experienced losses on services.

Nationwide, 34 hospitals have converted to rural emergency hospital status since 2023. Most of them are located in the Southeast. 

Progressive Health of Batesville has become one of the most robust rural emergency hospitals in the nation by operating a “hospital within a hospital”: a separate long-term acute care facility that has taken the place of the shuttered inpatient floor, said Whitwell.

The challenges presented by the new hospital model can coalesce with other problems, like the rising costs of ambulance services nationwide and low insurance reimbursements for medical transports, said John Gale, a researcher at the University of Southern Maine who studies rural health care and emergency services. 

But it isn’t unreasonable for a county to request support from the hospital to cover the costs of ambulance services, especially if the hospital’s lack of inpatient care places a greater burden on the county’s existing emergency transportation services, he said. 

The county’s contract with Lifeguard has doubled since the hospital converted to a rural emergency hospital while ambulance services have become increasingly strained, said Panola County Board of Supervisors President Cole Flint. 

In the second half of 2024, transfers from Progressive Health of Batesville to larger facilities averaged about three hours, said a spokesperson for Lifeguard. 

Medically necessary transfers to higher-level care are typically covered by a patient or their insurer, but the rate an ambulance is paid does not always cover its costs, said Miller. 

And there are greater costs to a community if an ambulance is not available when it is needed, he said.

Progressive Health of Batesville has a transfer agreement with North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo 74 miles away, but also transfers patients to hospitals in Oxford, Southhaven or Memphis depending on their condition. 

Rural emergency hospitals are required to have a transfer agreement with a Level 1 or Level 2 trauma center. North Mississippi Medical Center is the closest trauma center to Batesville.

Before the hospital converted to a rural emergency hospital, Whitwell said he met with county leaders and did his best to communicate the impact the change would have – both positive and negative. 

The hospital provides essential emergency room care to Panola County, said Rep. Josh Hawkins, R-Batesville, who represents the county in the state Legislature. But he said the county, with a population of 30,000 people, is too large to go without inpatient care. 

“I would rather have a full-service hospital than just a (rural emergency hospital),” he said. 

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

Charles Huff left the Sun Belt championship Marshall football program to take over the job at Southern Miss, which finished last. He talks about the difficult task ahead of him in his Crooked Letter debut. Also, the Clevelands discuss the Super Bowl, college basketball and the upcoming weekend of college baseball.

Stream all episodes here.

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