Closing the Medicaid Coverage Gap Would Save 7,000 Lives Each Year - Center for American Progress
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Medical debt was cut nearly in half after Medicaid expansion, study finds
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Democrats favor it. Republicans oppose it.
Republicans have generally opposed Medicaid expansion in Mississippi, citing budget considerations and fears over future changes in Medicaid coverage and reimbursement rates. Mississippi Democrats have generally supported the health care policy initiatives of their party under the ACA. Still, both parties have worried about how such possible fiscal impacts would influence an old legislative truism. Once state government agrees to provide a service and constituents come to depend upon it, itâs politically difficult to take that service away.
Historically, Mississippi lawmakers have been fine with the federal government paying the lionâs share of health care provision for the poor, the aged, the blind, and children, but they are wary of being left holding the fiscal bag should Congress or a future White House administration change the Medicaid rules.
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In November, Missourians voted to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, granting access to health insurance to roughly 230,000 people living in poverty. Now the state’s Republican legislators are defying the will of their voters by refusing to implement the expansion.
In late April, the Missouri Senate blocked funding for Medicaid expansion. Last week, Gov. Mike Parsons cited the lack of funding to justify withdrawing the expansion plan entirely.
Lawsuits will likely be filed over Parsons’s decision. But this is not the first time Republican leaders in a conservative state have fought to block their voters’ wishes on Medicaid expansion. Utah legislators had sought to scale back the expansion plan approved by their voters in 2018, though they eventually acquiesced once the Trump administration said the legislature’s alternate proposal was not permissible.