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State insurance premium hike blunts teacher pay raise

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State insurance premium hike blunts teacher pay raise

Athena Lindsey, a teacher and policy fellow with Teach Plus Mississippi, repeatedly heard the same concern when surveying teachers in the lead-up to the historic 2022 teacher pay raise: “Every time you see a pay increase, the insurance premiums always go up, so you never really get to feel the actual pay raise.”

Insurance premiums for public employees rose 6% on Jan. 1 of this year, the fifth consecutive year with an increase. The report of the Teach Plus Mississippi survey showed lower insurance premiums as the third highest policy priority for teachers, behind two related to pay increases.

“A lot of them in the survey said that they had second jobs just for that reason, because the insurance plans were ridiculous,” said Lindsey.

The average teacher salary in Mississippi is $53,000, which drops to $40,990 after taxes and retirement contributions, according to calculations by Mississippi First. Premiums for individuals on the plan make up 1% of their take home pay, but 25% for employees with their family on the state insurance. After premiums, take home pay for employees with their family on the plan drops to $30,910.

Five teachers interviewed by Mississippi Today expressed growing frustration with the rising costs and falling benefit quality. State officials say these changes were made to counter rising health insurance costs that are causing financial deficits, with the reserves of the state plan dropping $119 million over the past nine years. Legislators say they are looking to address this problem next session.

The state health plan served nearly 194,000 state employees and their dependents in 2021, the most recent year for which there is data. Most people opt for the “Select” plan with more benefits, but the number of people on that plan has been slowly falling since 2016.

Premium costs have remained largely unchanged for individuals on the single-employee plan, but people whose families also receive insurance through the state plan have seen more significant increases.

Per state law, the state contributes 100% of the premium cost for basic coverage for employees. Employees pay between $20-46 monthly for individual coverage if they opt for the plan with more benefits. The state does not contribute to premium costs for children and spouses, making family coverage significantly more expensive. Prices range between $124 and $840 a month, and vary based on the number of dependents and quality of coverage.

Mississippi is one of two states in the Southeast that doesn’t pay any extra towards premiums for family coverage, according to figures compiled by the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration that were presented at a 2021 hearing. Rep. Kent McCarty, R-Hattiesburg, introduced a bill this session for the state to pay 50% of dependent premiums, but it died in committee.

“A lot of jobs are offering coverage for dependents already, and a lot of times teachers leave to take those jobs, so we thought this could be a way to make the teaching profession more competitive with others and keep teachers in the classroom,” he said.

A recent report published by Mississippi First studied why teachers are leaving the classroom. In it’s survey, 42% said they could not afford deductibles, premiums, or other health care costs not covered by insurance, and financial insecurity was closely linked with risk of leaving the classroom.

“Any improvement in this area, whether that is reducing cost for teachers or improving the quality of the plan, is all going to necessitate more resources from the state,” said Toren Ballard, K-12 policy director for Mississippi First.

This gap between individual and family premiums is common in the teaching profession. According to a 2020 report published by the Southern Regional Education Board, teachers pay an average of $200 less in monthly premiums for single plans than private sector employees, but an average of $257 more in premiums for family plans.

Megan Boren, project manager with the board, said her study of teacher compensation found most states in the Southeast have work to do because of the sizable cost gap between single and family coverage. Boren said she would not single out Mississippi as struggling in this area, but pointed to Alabama, Virginia, and Florida as exemplar states that have successfully kept costs down for employees.

“A lot of this is just tied to how health insurance is set up, and there’s not a lot of wiggle room or great strategies that an employer, government or otherwise, can take on these pieces,” Boren said. “Our hands are quite tied because of the way health insurance is structured in this country and some of the general policies around that.”

A bill moving through the Legislature this session would study the state health insurance system and make recommendations for legislation to be proposed in 2024. The task force, proposed by Senate Education Committee Chairman Dennis DeBar, R-Leaksville, would focus on the financial solvency of the plan, rate increases, benefits and comparisons to other Southeastern states.

“I just want to see a deep dive into why expenses keep going up and up,” DeBar said. “I don’t want insurance (costs) to be a deterrent to getting insurance and doing yearly check-ups, because on the back end, medical conditions may be worse off if people don’t treat them.”

Some teachers share his concern that current rates are discouraging employees from seeking preventive care.

“I get that if you have a catastrophic year, it’s there for you, but this should be so much more in a state that is so unhealthy,” said Jason Reid, a teacher in the DeSoto County School District.

Reid, a two-time cancer patient, has hit his out-of-pocket maximum with both diagnoses and experienced the safety net that the plan can provide, but said that because of rising costs, most of his colleagues feel like they never see a benefit. Reid added the insurance plan usually isn’t stopping people from becoming teachers, but that it is driving them away.

Advocates say a lack of investment from the state is also driving away other state employees. Brenda Scott, the president of the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees, said teachers got a “decent” raise last year, but that for other state workers, raises are “very rare.” 

Scott said she would like to see raises for state employees to make it easier for them to afford premium increases when they come along, or for the state to expand Medicaid to give employees more coverage options.

READ MORE: Q&A: What is Medicaid expansion, really?

“They’re not expanding Medicaid, which is meant to cover the working poor,” she said. “There’s a lot of state employees who would fit into that category.”

Adding to frustration with the insurance premium increase are other changes to the plan.

Multiple teachers expressed frustration with the declining quality of prescription drug coverage since the switch from Prime Therapeutics to CVS Caremark, a change that state officials said was made to save money on rising healthcare costs.

Renee Webber-Butler, a teacher in the Perry County School District, was informed after the switch that the ADHD medicine her 16-year-old son takes would no longer be covered. He had tried multiple medications and had negative side effects with some before finding success with Vyvanse, the medicine that was no longer being covered.

“I explained to him what was going on, and he said, ‘Mom, I’m not going to have to take that medicine where I’m mean and angry am I?’” Webber-Butler said. “How do you look at your kid and say, ‘Well, son, I’m sorry but … on educator salaries, we can’t (pay out of pocket.)’”

She said they found another medicine for him that will be covered, but called it “ridiculous” that her son has been on three different medicines in six months.

Cindy Bradshaw, the administrator of the state health insurance plan, said the switch to CVS Caremark, as well as the deductible and premium increases in recent years, are adjustments to balance the finances of the health insurance plan. The plan has been spending more on care than premiums could cover every year since 2016, which has significantly decreased the surplus reserves of the plan. The surplus was $247 million in 2012 and had dwindled to $64 million by the end of 2021, according to the plan’s actuarial report for 2021.

During the 2022 legislative session, the state health insurance plan was given $60 million in American Rescue Plan funds, and a bill has passed out of committee to give the plan another $30 million in federal pandemic relief funds this session.

When discussing the incremental actions of the state board that manages the health insurance plan, Bradshaw said, “We’re trying to softly land a plane instead of having a big crash.”


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

Mississippi Today

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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Amount of federal cuts to health agencies doubles

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-02 14:48:00

Cuts to public health and mental health funding in Mississippi have doubled – reaching approximately $238 million – since initial estimates last week, when cancellations to federal grants allocated for COVID-19 pandemic relief were first announced.

Slashed funding to the state’s health department will impact community health workers, planned improvements to the public health laboratory, the agency’s ability to provide COVID-19 vaccinations and preparedness efforts for emerging pathogens, like H5 bird flu. 

The grant cancellations, which total $230 million, will not be catastrophic for the agency, State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney told members of the Mississippi House Democratic Caucus at the Capitol April 1. 

But they will set back the agency, which is still working to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic decimated its workforce and exposed “serious deficiencies” in the agency’s data collection and management systems.

The cuts will have a more significant impact on the state’s economy and agency subgrantees, who carry out public health work on the ground with health department grants, he said. 

“The agency is okay. But I’m very worried about all of our partners all over the state,” Edney told lawmakers. 

The health department was forced to lay off 17 contract workers as a result of the grant cancellations, though Edney said he aims to rehire them under new contracts. 

Other positions funded by health department grants are in jeopardy. Two community health workers at Back Bay Mission, a nonprofit that supports people living in poverty in Biloxi, were laid off as a result of the cuts, according to WLOX. It’s unclear how many more community health workers, who educate and help people access health care, have been impacted statewide.

The department was in the process of purchasing a comprehensive data management system before the cuts and has lost the ability to invest in the Mississippi Public Health Laboratory, he said. The laboratory performs environmental and clinical testing services that aid in the prevention and control of disease. 

Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney addresses lawmakers during the Democratic caucus meeting at the State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. The discussion centered on potential federal healthcare funding cuts.

The agency has worked to reduce its dependence on federal funds, Edney said, which will help it weather the storm. Sixty-six percent of the department’s budget is federally funded. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pulled back $11.4 billion in funding to state health departments nationwide last week. The funding was originally allocated by Congress for testing and vaccination against the coronavirus as part of COVID-19 relief legislation, and to address health disparities in high-risk and underserved populations. An additional $1 billion from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration was also terminated. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” the Department of Health and Human Services Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement.

HHS did not respond to questions from Mississippi Today about the cuts in Mississippi.

Democratic attorneys general and governors in 23 states filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Tuesday, arguing that the sudden cancellation of the funding was unlawful and seeking injunctive relief to halt the cuts. Mississippi did not join the suit. 

Mental health cuts

The Department of Mental Health received about $7.5 million in cuts to federal grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. 

Phaedre Cole, president of the Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers, speaks to lawmakers about federal healthcare funding cuts during the Democratic caucus meeting at the State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Tuesday, April 1, 2025.

Over half of the cuts were to community mental health centers, and supported alcohol and drug treatment services for people who can not afford treatment, housing services for parenting and pregnant women and their children, and prevention services. 

The cuts could result in reduced beds at community mental health centers, Phaedre Cole, the director of Life Help and President of Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers, told lawmakers April 1. 

Community mental health centers in Mississippi are already struggling to keep their doors open. Four centers in the state have closed since 2012, and a third have an imminent to high risk of closure, Cole told legislators at a hearing last December. 

“We are facing a financial crisis that threatens our ability to maintain our mission,” she said Dec. 5. 

Cuts to the department will also impact diversion coordinators, who are charged with reducing recidivism of people with serious mental illness to the state’s mental health hospital, a program for first-episode psychosis, youth mental health court funding, school-aged mental health programs and suicide response programs. 

The Department of Mental Health hopes to reallocate existing funding from alcohol tax revenue and federal block grant funding to discontinued programs.

The agency posted a list of all the services that have received funding cuts. The State Department of Health plans to post such a list, said spokesperson Greg Flynn.

Health leaders have expressed fear that there could be more funding cuts coming. 

“My concern is that this is the beginning and not the end,” said Edney.  

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

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