In a hastily-called special session last week, the Mississippi Legislature overwhelmingly approved an $246 million incentive package to support a $2.5 billion aluminum mill project in Lowndes County. The incentive equals roughly 10 percent of the project size.
For the Golden Triangle, the deal was a no-brainer. The new plant will produce about 1,000 jobs at an average salary of $93,000.
Outside the area, though, the lightning speed with which Gov. Tate Reeves, who called the special session, and the legislature, which passed the measure in the span of only a few hours, raised an interesting question.
Why is it, the Greenwood Commonwealth asked in an editorial on the eve of last week’s special session, that the legislature is so quick to move on an economic development project that benefits only one area of the state while stubbornly refusing to move on another matter that has reached the point of crisis and would dwarf the impact of any private economic development project?
Put it this way: What if the Governor and legislature were given the opportunity to support a project that would bring $1 billion to the state each year, add 11,300 jobs in each of the next five years and substantially improve the healthcare system? What if that project could be had at an investment of 5 percent of the total impact — half the percentage of the aluminum mill project?
Furthermore, what if taking that action could rescue a hospital system that teeters on collapse?
Would not the legislature act with the same urgency we saw last week if given that opportunity?
To put it succinctly, why hasn’t the state followed 39 other states in expanding Medicaid to an estimated 200,000 low wage-earning Mississippians since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010?
The state’s leadership — especially Gov. Reeves and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn — has thumbed its nose at $11 billion in federal money to cover the vast majority of those costs since then, even as hospital after hospital — six in the past eight years — has closed, largely because the cost of uncompensated care (estimated at $616 million in 2019 alone) is unsustainable.
Hospitals are obligated to treat everyone who comes through their doors. When patients don’t have adequate coverage, hospitals are left holding the bag. Expanded Medicaid would provide a backstop for those hospitals and help ensure their existence.
The problem is only getting worse.
In July, Greenville-based Delta Health System closed its neonatal intensive care unit, citing $1 million in annual losses. It was the only NICU in a four-county region of the Mississippi Delta.
State Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said last week the hospitals in both Greenville and Greenwood are in jeopardy of closing, leaving a huge region of the state without a hospital.
The Mississippi Hospital Association says five hospitals are facing imminent closure while a 2020 study by the Chartis Center for Rural Health estimates 64 percent of the state’s remaining rural hospitals are at high risk of closing.
When the nearest hospital emergency room is 100 miles away, it doesn’t matter how good your health insurance might be: The well-insured and uninsured are in the same dangerous boat.
Expanding Medicaid would benefit all Mississippians from both an economic and health perspective.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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