Prenatal care for poor women may be a casualty of political infighting

by Sophia Paffenroth, Mississippi Today
February 28, 2025

A lawmaker playing hardball may cost poor pregnant women a policy that would help them receive timely prenatal care – after the program’s implementation was already delayed a year because of administrative hiccups. 

Senate Medicaid Chairman Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, told Mississippi Today he will not be taking up a House bill to fix the issues in the program. He called it “his prerogative as chairman” – despite authoring his own bill last year on the policy and purportedly being a strong proponent.

House Medicaid Chair Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, the author of last year’s bill on presumptive eligibility for pregnant women that passed into law, re-worked the bill this year to match federal guidelines so the program can take effect. It passed the House unanimously Jan. 24 and was transferred to the Senate. 

But now, it may die in the Senate due to political bartering. 

Blackwell added the policy to the Medicaid tech bill, legislation that comes up nearly every year to make technical amendments and updates to laws governing the Division of Medicaid. But Blackwell’s bill contains dozens of items – including special interest items such as mandating that the agency cover a new, $16,000 postpartum depression drug and a sleep apnea device. 

Sage Therapeutics, the Massachusetts-based company that makes the postpartum depression drug, has hired the local lobbying firm the Clearwater Group this year. 

“I don’t believe it’s the best idea (that) something so critical (as pregnancy presumptive eligibility) should be attached to a $7 million laundry list of unrelated lobbyist requests, particularly as our federal government has stated its intent to trim such unnecessary spending,” McGee told Mississippi Today. “The House will continue fighting for the people who don’t have a hired lobbying effort.”

Medical experts say early prenatal care is essential to mitigating bad health outcomes like preterm birth, for which Mississippi leads the nation. 

Should Blackwell’s 186-page technical amendment bill pass, it would cost the Division of Medicaid $6.8 million. In contrast, it was estimated last year that presumptive eligibility would cost just under $600,000. Lawmakers appropriated that amount to the agency last year.

Although Blackwell’s bill passed the full Senate on Feb. 12, another lawmaker also had questions about the costs associated with the bill. 

“It looks to me like we’re covering a lot more than we have in the past, and I think – don’t we have like a $25 million Medicaid deficit?” Sen. Angela Hill, R-Picayune, asked on the floor. 

Blackwell confirmed that the agency is facing a deficit next year.

Blackwell’s bill is now in the hands of the House Medicaid committee, which McGee chairs. 

McGee’s bill – which strictly fixes the issues with pregnancy presumptive eligibility and would allow the Division of Medicaid to continue training providers and allow pregnant women to take advantage of the program – will die if not passed out of Blackwell’s committee by the deadline Tuesday, March 4.

The policy, called Presumptive Eligibility for Pregnant Women, would allow low-income women who became newly-eligible for Medicaid once pregnant to receive immediate prenatal care as soon as they find out they’re pregnant – even if their Medicaid application is still pending. The policy is especially effective in non-expanded states, where the majority of low-income women aren’t eligible for Medicaid until they become pregnant – meaning a lengthy application process can cut well into their pregnancy.

Mississippi is currently one of only three states with neither expansion or presumptive eligibility for pregnant women. 

Family Health Center in Laurel was one of the first clinics to sign up for the program when it was rolled out by the Division of Medicaid last year. Dr. Rashad Ali, an OB and the CEO of the clinic who has made it his mission to serve uninsured and underinsured women, was disappointed to hear that the policy needed to go through the Legislature once again to be amended. 

Now, he worries what will happen if the policy never goes into effect. 

“I think they’re missing out on great opportunities to enhance the wellbeing of pregnant moms in the state of Mississippi,” said Ali. “… We are one of the leading states in terms of maternal mortality. This is one of the things that can help bring us out of the top.”

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

On this day in 2003

by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Today
February 28, 2025

Feb. 28, 2003

A U.S. District Court jury in Jackson, Mississippi, convicted Ernest Avants of murder — the first federal murder charges connected to the pursuit of unpunished killings from the civil rights era. 

Avants received a life sentence for joining other Klansmen in killing an African-American handyman, Ben Chester White, near Natchez, Mississippi. The Klansmen had hoped to lure Martin Luther King Jr., who was taking part in a march in Mississippi, to the area by killing White. The plot failed. 

White is among the 40 martyrs listed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.

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

The Mississippi House has once again passed legislation to increase the size of a program that already sends millions in state dollars to private schools.

The House, as it did in 2024, approved legislation on Wednesday sponsored by Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, that would increase the tax credits available through the Children’s Promise Act. Private schools have been receiving money through the law since 2020.

Lamar said the Act shores up nonprofits that provide services such as foster care and special needs, and that demand currently outstrips the amount of tax credits it makes available. In addition to other nonprofits, the statute also makes tax credits to private schools that meet its criteria.

“Right now there is not enough credits for the need,” Lamar said.

Some Democrats and public school advocates said the proposal — along with two other measures the House passed Wednesday bolstering the tax credits available under the Children’s Promise Act — was the latest measure in a flurry of bills introduced this session that would send taxpayer money to private schools.

“If we continue to bolster private schools with public schools’ money, it continues to harm the public school system,” said House Minority Leader Robert Johnson.

Under the Children’s Promise Act, a person or corporation can make a donation to one of the private schools certified by the Department of Revenue and receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for up to 50% of the donor’s state tax liability.

The maximum a private school currently can receive through the program is $405,000 a year.

The program was initiated in 2019 and touted as a mechanism to provide additional money to nonprofits that care for foster children. But a provision to provide tax credits to private schools was tucked into the bill.

Under current law, a total of $9 million a year in tax credit money can be doled out to private schools. HB 1903, which passed Wednesday, would increase that total up to $16 million in 2025, with the potential for more increases in future years.

The legislation does this by increasing the maximum amount of tax credits allocated by the Department of Revenue for the program from $18 million to $40 million in 2027.

“Clearly, Chairman Lamar’s priority is to get public money to private schools,” said Nancy Loome, director of the public education advocacy group The Parents Campaign. “He’s been trying to do this in many different ways, sneaking it into bills and that sort of thing. It is not the priority of the people of Mississippi. They have overwhelmingly made it clear that they oppose tax dollars benefiting private schools,” Loome said.

According to Loome, 100 private schools qualified this year for Children’s Promise Act money on a first-come, first-served basis. The schools have no obligation to provide any accountability on how the taxpayer money is spent, she added.

Under HB 1903, no more than 50% of the allocated tax credits during a calendar year could be directed to schools.

Another bill that passed Wednesday, HB 1902, would redirect some unused state tax credits to the Children’s Promise Act, Lamar said. A third bill that could be used as a vehicle to increase the tax credits, HB 1894, was initially sold by Lamar as a bond bill, to borrow money for capital projects. Lamar inserted language dealing with the tax credits into the bill, but neglected to mention this to the rest of the Ways and Means Committee he chairs before they hurriedly voted to pass it late Tuesday.

All three bills dealing with the Children’s Promise Act passed with large bipartisan majorities on Wednesday, but Johnson and other opponents said all of them should be altered before becoming law.

Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, told Mississippi Today on Thursday that he does not support sending more tax credit money under the Children’s Promise Act to private schools.

In years past, legislators have attempted to amend the law to direct all of the tax credits to benefit organizations that house and serve children in foster care. Lamar was successful in defeating those efforts.

Johnson wants to narrow the criteria used to evaluate which organizations are eligible for the tax credit so that private schools don’t get taxpayer money. He also wants provisions directing the Department of Revenue to collect more data on how the money is spent.

The Department of Revenue is responsible for certifying the private schools that are eligible to receive funds through the Children’s Promise Act. But, according to responses provided by the department, no information is available on how the funds are spent.

In 2024, the department told legislators that it did not know how the funds were used. DOR also did not have updated information on the number of children served through the Children’s Promise Act. Lamar said in 2024 that he would obtain that information, but it was not clear Thursday if he had done that.

The House’s desire to greatly expand the size of the Children’s Promise Act comes against the backdrop of a legislative session where legislative leaders have made school choice, which can entail sending taxpayer money to private schools, a central priority. The primary measure that would have done that died in the House earlier this month.

Bobby Harrison contributed to this report.

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