Mississippi Today

Why so many top candidates are ignoring Mississippi’s worsening hospital crisis

Published

1 year ago

July 20, 2023

The hospital crisis has emerged as the state’s most dire problem. Yet with Mississippi’s major statewide primary election less than three weeks away, only one candidate for an office that could do anything about it is even acknowledging its existence.

Gov. Tate Reeves, who faces two Republican primary opponents on Aug. 6, would rather voters think about problems that apparently don’t exist in Mississippi like trans athletes and the influence of national liberals on our state’s policies — not the fact that dozens of hospitals are on the brink of closure.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and his Republican primary challenger state Sen. Chris McDaniel appear most focused on out-flanking each other on the right and arguing over who is the truer conservative Republican. Never mind the fact that at least 200,000 working Mississippians cannot afford doctor visits and dying hospitals are underwater having to cover those bills.

Speaker of the House Philip Gunn isn’t running for reelection and has been missing in action the past few weeks. And speaker heir apparent Rep. Jason White, who does have a Republican primary challenger for his House seat early next month, has been a complete non-factor in the 2023 cycle.

Mississippi’s hospital system is failing, and as campaigns really begin to share their ideas and solutions with voters, just one single candidate for high office, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley, has focused meaningful attention on the crisis.

Right now, no Mississippi hospital — large or small, urban or rural, private or public — is immune from potentially debilitating financial concerns. Hospital leaders are having to make life-changing decisions about how they can balance their budgets. They’ve slashed health care services, laid off staff or even closed doors permanently just to make ends meet.

State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney put it bluntly a couple weeks ago on a radio program: “No one is knocking it out of the park right now. We have a spectrum of hospitals that literally see their drop-dead date ahead of them if something does not happen.”

Edney, in fact, has been desperately working to sound this alarm for months now, telling the State Board of Health in November 2022 that the crisis was worsening “and no one is coming to the rescue.”

Boy, was that an accurate prophecy. Below are just a few of Mississippi Today’s headlines since Edney issued that warning:

Vicksburg hospital, evicted by Merit Health, is now closed
Jackson area’s only inpatient hospice facility closes
St. Dominic lays off 5.5% of its workforce, halts mental health services
Health care giant with dozens of facilities in Mississippi announces layoffs
Memorial Hospital in Gulfport lays off nearly 100 employees
North Mississippi health system announces layoffs
In last ditch effort to stay open, Holly Springs hospital ends inpatient care
‘The funding just isn’t there’: Yazoo health department reopens just two days a week
Delta hospital, once projected to close within 6 months, will stay open until next year
‘Leaving for greener pastures’: Mississippi’s nurse vacancy rates are at their highest in at least a decade
Hospitals thought they’d get $450M in extra money this year. They’re actually getting much less.
A quarter of Mississippi’s rural hospitals could close within three years, report shows

The proverbial walls are closing in on Mississippians. Emergency rooms across the state are constantly full with hours-long wait times. Cash-strapped health care systems are struggling to recruit and retain nurses and doctors, meaning fewer beds are available for people who need them. Ambulance services are struggling to meet demand and respond quickly when dispatched because of hospital bed backups.

So why aren’t our state’s best positioned leaders even mentioning the crisis — let alone offering solutions to it — on the 2023 campaign trail? Because it would be incredibly difficult for them to defend their past inaction on the crisis, which they’ve been warned about over and over and over again.

For several years, both private sector and government appointed health care experts have all but begged Mississippi’s elected officials to do something — anything — to slow the system’s bleeding.

The experts have even presented the politicians with a readymade solution to the hospital crisis: Medicaid expansion. Expansion — not a cure-all fix, but by all accounts a major assist — would bring an estimated $1.61 billion to the state’s health care system in year one. In year two, it would garner $1.64 billion. Projected out over several years, new revenue to the state would never fall below $1 billion per year. In new jobs and revenue created, several studies show, the policy would more than cover the marginal cost the state would have to pay to draw down the billions in federal funds.

The politicians, however, have leaned on rosy, non-scientific anecdotes or weak, politically charged talking points to ignore the pleas to pass expansion or other programs that would help.

Reeves, the leader of the state’s opposition to Medicaid expansion for more than 10 years, has not mentioned the hospital crisis so far on the 2023 campaign trail without being prompted by reporters. He could not be more dug in on his opposition to expansion.

Meanwhile, his opponent Presley is devoting campaign resources on a clear pitch for expansion as a solution to the hospital crisis. Given Medicaid expansion’s broad popularity with Mississippi voters on top of its other benefits, this focus couldn’t have been a tough decision for Presley.

“Tate Reeves is fiddling while the health care system in Mississippi burns to the ground,” Presley told Mississippi Today earlier this month. “… There are ways to look at the Arkansas model or the Indiana model or models in other states in which we get something done on (Medicaid expansion).”

But then there are the others. Considering the questions their newfound focus on the crisis would raise, the silence from so many top 2023 candidates shouldn’t be all that surprising.

How can these leaders who have ignored the expert cries for years defend leaving at least $10 billion on the table since 2013, when Medicaid expansion was phased in? What about the additional $1.5 billion in each coming year that would help hospitals keep services going and doors open?

How would Hosemann, who at times has expressed openness to some version of expansion, answer questions about why he hasn’t worked in his last four years of immense power to at least start an earnest legislative debate? If he’s worried about not being conservative enough, he should ask the 15 Republican-dominated states that have already expanded how well their health care economies are doing. How on earth would McDaniel justify calling a program that would send billions directly to health care providers “an expansion of the welfare state?”

How would Gunn or White explain to their constituents that they have been sitting on their hands in Jackson on this issue?

And how would Reeves, a self-proclaimed “numbers guy” who focuses so much of his time boasting how “hot” the Mississippi economy is, explain why he’s rejecting a 10-to-1 return on state investment that would stand to save thousands of jobs and create new ones across the state? How is he justifying the hospital crisis when pitching business leaders who may want to move their companies to the state?

At least one major Mississippi hospital leader is apparently asking the same question of him.

“We don’t understand why Tate Reeves doesn’t understand why he needs a healthy workforce,” Delta Health Systems CEO Iris Stacker said just last week while publicly criticizing the governor for refusing to expand Medicaid.

As the hospital crisis worsens and we search for answers to these questions and more, just look at the past records of these leaders. There, you’ll find all the answers you need.

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

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1911

Published

3 hours ago

December 21, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-21 07:00:00

Dec. 21, 1911

A colorized photograph of Josh Gibson, who was playing with the Homestead Grays Credit: Wikipedia

Josh Gibson, the Negro League’s “Home Run King,” was born in Buena Vista, Georgia.

When the family’s farm suffered, they moved to Pittsburgh, and Gibson tried baseball at age 16. He eventually played for a semi-pro team in Pittsburgh and became known for his towering home runs.

He was watching the Homestead Grays play on July 25, 1930, when the catcher injured his hand. Team members called for Gibson, sitting in the stands, to join them. He was such a talented catcher that base runners were more reluctant to steal. He hit the baseball so hard and so far (580 feet once at Yankee Stadium) that he became the second-highest paid player in the Negro Leagues behind Satchel Paige, with both of them entering the National Baseball Hame of Fame.

The Hall estimated that Gibson hit nearly 800 homers in his 17-year career and had a lifetime batting average of .359. Gibson was portrayed in the 1996 TV movie, “Soul of the Game,” by Mykelti Williamson. Blair Underwood played Jackie Robinson, Delroy Lindo portrayed Satchel Paige, and Harvey Williams played “Cat” Mays, the father of the legendary Willie Mays.

Gibson has now been honored with a statue outside the Washington Nationals’ ballpark.

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

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1958

Published

1 day ago

December 20, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-20 07:00:00

Dec. 20, 1958

Bruce Boynton played a key role in the U.S. Supreme Court case that led to the Freedom Riders protests of 1961. Credit: Jay Reeves/Associated Press

Bruce Boynton was heading home on a Trailways bus when he arrived in Richmond, Virginia, at about 8 p.m. The 21-year-old student at Howard University School of Law — whose parents, Amelia Boynton Robinson and Sam Boynton, were at the forefront of the push for equal voting rights in Selma — headed for the restaurant inside the bus terminal.

The “Black” section looked “very unsanitary,” with water on the floor. The “white” section looked “clinically clean,” so he sat down and asked a waitress for a cheeseburger and a tea. She asked him to move to the “Black” section. An assistant manager followed, poking his finger in his face and hurling a racial epithet. Then an officer handcuffed him, arresting him for trespassing.

Boynton spent the night in jail and was fined $10, but the law student wouldn’t let it go. Knowing the law, he appealed, saying the “white” section in the bus terminal’s restaurant violated the Interstate Commerce Act. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. “Interstate passengers have to eat, and they have a right to expect that this essential transportation food service,” Justice Hugo Black wrote, “would be rendered without discrimination prohibited by the Interstate Commerce Act.”

A year later, dozens of Freedom Riders rode on buses through the South, testing the law. In 1965, Boynton’s mother was beaten unconscious on the day known as “Bloody Sunday,” where law enforcement officials beat those marching across the Selma bridge in Alabama. The photograph of Bruce Boynton holding his mother after her beating went around the world, inspiring changes in voting rights laws.

He worked the rest of his life as a civil rights attorney and died in 2020.

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‘Something to be proud of’: Dual-credit students in Mississippi go to college at nation’s highest rate

Published

1 day ago

December 20, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Molly Minta – 2024-12-20 06:00:00

Mississippi high school students who take dual-credit courses go to college at the nation’s highest rate, according to a recent report.

It’s generally true that students who take college classes while in high school attend college at higher rates than their peers. Earlier this year, a study from the Community College Research Center at Teacher’s College, Columbia University found that nationally, 81% of dual-credit students go to college.

In Mississippi, that number shoots up to 93%, meaning the vast majority of the state’s high school students who take college classes enroll in a two- or four-year university.

“When we did this ranking, boom, right to the top it went,” said John Fink, a senior research associate and program lead at the research center who co-authored the study.

State officials say there’s likely no silver bullet for the high rate at which Mississippi’s dual-credit students enroll in college. Here, “dual credit” means a course that students can take for both high school and college credit. It’s different from “dual enrollment,” which refers to a high school student who is also enrolled at a community college.

In the last 10 years, participation in these programs has virtually exploded among Mississippi high school students. In 2014, about 5,900 students took dual-credit courses in Mississippi, according to the Mississippi Community College Board.

Now, it’s more than 18,000.

“It reduces time to completion on the post-secondary level,” said Kell Smith, Mississippi C0mmunity College Board’s executive director. “It potentially reduces debt because students are taking classes at the community college while they’re still in high school, and it also just exposes high school students to what post-secondary course work is like.”

“It’s something to be proud of,” he added.

There are numerous reasons why Mississippi’s dual-credit courses have been attracting more and more students and helping them enroll in college at the nation’s highest rate, officials say.

With a few college credits under their belt, students may be more inspired to go for a college degree since it’s closer in reach. Dual-credit courses can also build confidence in students who were on the fence about college without requiring them to take a high-stakes test in the spring. And the Mississippi Department of Education’s accountability model ensures that school districts are offering advanced courses like dual credit.

Plus, Mississippi’s 15 community colleges reach more corners of the state, meaning districts that may not be able to offer Advanced Placement courses can likely partner with a nearby community college.

“They’re sometimes like the only provider in many communities, and they’re oftentimes the most affordable providers,” Fink said.

Test score requirements can pose a barrier to students who want to take dual-credit courses, but that may be less of a factor in Mississippi. While the state requires students to score a 19 on ACT Math to take certain courses, which is above the state average, a 17 on the ACT Reading, below the state average of 17.9, is enough for other courses.

Transportation is another barrier that many high schools have eliminated by offering dual-credit courses on their campuses, making it so students don’t have to commute to the community colleges to take classes.

“They can leave one classroom, go next door, and they’re sitting in a college class,” said Wendy Clemons, the Mississippi Department of Education’s associate state superintendent for secondary education.

This also means high school counselors can work directly with dual-credit students to encourage them to pursue some form of college.

“It is much less difficult to graduate and not go to college when you already possess 12 hours of credit,” Clemons said.

Word-of-mouth is just as key.

“First of all, I think parents and community members know more about it,” Clemons said, “They have almost come to expect it, in a way.”

This all translates to benefits to students. Students who take dual-credit courses are more likely to finish college on time. They can save on student debt.

But not all Mississippi students are benefiting equally, Fink said. Thr research center’s report found that Black students in Mississippi and across the country were less likely to pursue dual-credit opportunities.

“The challenge like we see in essentially every state is that who’s in dual enrollment is not really reflective of who’s in high school,” Fink said.

Without more study, it’s hard to say specifically why this disparity exists in Mississippi, but Fink said research has generally shown it stems from elitist beliefs about who qualifies for dual-credit courses. Test score requirements can be another factor, along with underresourced school districts.

“The conventional thinking is (that) dual enrollment is just … another gifted-and-talented program?” Fink said. “It has all this baggage that is racialized … versus, are we thinking about these as opportunities for any high school student?”

Another factor may be the cost of dual-credit courses, which is not uniform throughout the state. Depending on where they live, some students may pay more for dual-credit courses depending on the agreements their school districts have struck with local community colleges and universities.

This isn’t just an equity issue for students — it affects the institutions, too.

“You know, we’ve seen that dual-credit at the community college level can be a double-edged sword,” Smith said. “We lose students who oftentimes … want to stay as long as they can, but there are only so many hours they can take at a community college.

Dual-credit courses, which are often offered at a free or reduced price, can also result in less revenue to the college.

“Dual credit does come at a financial price for some community colleges, because of the deeply discounted rates that they offer it,” Smith said. “The more students that you have taking dual-credit courses, the more the colleges can lose.”

State officials are also working to turn the double-edged sword into a win-win for students and institutions.

One promising direction is career-technical education. Right now, the vast majority of dual credit students enroll in academic courses, such as general education classes like Composition 1 or 2 that they will need for any kind of college degree.

“CTE is far more expensive to teach,” Clemons said.

Smith hopes that state officials can work to offer more dual-credit career-technical classes.

“If a student knows they want to enroll in career-tech in one of our community colleges, let’s load them up,” Smith said. “Those students are more likely to enter the workforce quicker. If you want to take the career-tech path, that’s your ultimate goal.”

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