NY Times: “Mississippi lawmakers reached an agreement late Monday on a proposal to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, providing largely free health coverage to an additional 200,000 low-income residents in a state with dire health outcomes and numerous rural hospitals facing financial collapse.
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The proposal still faces daunting hurdles, including a possible veto from Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican who opposes Medicaid expansion, and the Biden administration’s stiff resistance to imposing work mandates.
Even so, the agreement represents a breakthrough for Mississippi, where a coalition of hospital leaders, the broader business community, religious groups and a bipartisan bloc of elected officials have pressed lawmakers to join the 40 other states that have expanded Medicaid over the past decade. Besides Kansas, Wisconsin and Wyoming, all of the holdout states are in the South.
“We know this is a historic piece of legislation,” Representative Missy McGee, the Republican chairwoman of the House Medicaid committee, told reporters during the negotiations.”