In recent weeks, four more Mississippi hospitals have filed for bankruptcy: in Magee, Batesville, Amory and Clarksdale. They are the latest in a list of Mississippi rural hospitals that are either closing, filing for bankruptcy or struggling to pay their bills.
The local hospital was once a mainstay of small towns in Mississippi, often the largest employer in the county and a source of great community pride and support. It is a sad day to watch their slow destruction.
The cause of this is simple: Mississippi remains one of 16 states that continues to turn down federal money for Medicaid expansion, thus denying coverage for 167,000 working poor. The Medicaid expansion is supposed to cover cutbacks in federal hospital reimbursements for uncompensated care, but in states the have turned down the federal money, the hospitals are out of luck.
The feds are paying for nearly all the money required to expand Medicaid. Mississippi is turning up its nose at a billion dollars a year, money that is sorely needed by rural hospitals serving the rural working poor. As a result, Mississippi is shooting itself in the foot and losing population as workers flee to neighboring states such as Louisiana and Arkansas where they can get medical coverage.
This is because the expansion of Medicaid to the working poor was part of Obamacare. Republicans don’t want to be seen as supporting anything to do with Obamacare, no matter how much fiscal sense it makes to a poor rural state like Mississippi. In a word, it’s politics.
The irony is that Medicaid remains for those in Mississippi who do not work full time. But why accept a low-paying starter job in Mississippi when you will immediately lose your medical benefits? By refusing to expand Medicaid, our Republican leadership is making sure those who don’t work will never try to get a job.
Obamacare was not the best way to fix America’s medical care problems. A variety of free market reforms would have been far superior. But that battle was lost years ago. A poor state like Mississippi should quit turning down a billion dollars a year.
This exercise in ideological purity over common-sense practicality is a monumental error, as these hospital bankruptcies and our state’s population decline attest.
