Medicaid expansion tops legislative wish list for MS Hospital Association

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - With the re-election of President Donald Trump, healthcare leaders in the state say there’s a new opportunity to push through Medicaid expansion.

This year, state lawmakers were unable to pass an expansion bill, in part, because of provisions regarding eligibility requirements.

Trump had allowed a waiver for work requirements during his first term, but the Biden administration rejected it. With Trump slated to return to the White House come January, health officials are optimistic some form of expansion could again be in the works.

It’s also a major priority for the Mississippi Hospital Association, which recently outlined its legislative agenda with WLBT. Priorities for the 2025 session include Medicaid expansion, Certificate of Need reform, bolstering the state’s healthcare workforce, and improving data security.

“As it relates to Medicaid expansion, this is one of the biggest issues we could tackle for Mississippians and for healthcare providers and to make our workforce healthier,” said MHA President and CEO Richard Roberson.

He pointed to the fact that in 2020, the Trump White House put in place the “Healthy Adult Opportunity Waiver,” which “had things for working adults. It also has exceptions for folks who aren’t working, but maybe are caregivers for children or for loved ones, people who may be full-time students - all those things which are Mississippi core values, things that Mississippians believe in.”

During the 2024 session, lawmakers failed to meet the deadline to push through a Medicaid expansion bill, in part, because the House and Senate could not agree on how many people would be covered, as well as a work requirement that opponents said would not make it past the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.

But Roberson is hopeful, saying last session’s final conference report tracked along provisions in the Healthy Adult waiver.

“I think it’s a great starting point, where the legislature left off,” he said. “It gives us a launch point that we’ve never had before on this issue. And I think we’ve got a great opportunity to take that and also try to combine and look at other aspects that the federal government, under a new administration, would approve.”

“It may not cover as many Mississippians as traditional Medicaid expansion would [cover], but it would still cover a significant number of Mississippians, probably anywhere from 70 to 80 percent of all those who would be eligible.”

Hospital Association officials also are pushing for reforming the state’s Certificate of Need rules, including increasing caps of equipment costs to address inflation.

“Every few years, the legislature will take a look at the CON requirements. The last significant revisions to those were made in 2016 and the Mississippi Hospital Association worked with the legislature on those,” Roberson said.

CON laws govern are needed

One revision this year would be to increase the cap for medical equipment costs from $1.5 million to $3 million.

“Over the last few years since COVID, overall health costs have gone up 10, 15, 20 percent. But since 2016, when we last revisited this law, they’ve gone up 30, 40 percent on some of these costs,” he said. “Right now... a hospital may pay upward for $2 million for some of the equipment that they use for patients - scanners... imaging machines... It’s gotten very expensive.”

MHA also would like to see CON laws removed for dialysis, allowing for hospitals to provide the service in-patient and outpatient.

The association does not want to do away with CON laws altogether, saying they are necessary to ensure healthcare is “provided in the most cost-effective setting.”

“It also helps prevent fraud and abuse. What we don’t want is additional folks coming into healthcare and taking advantage of people and running up costs, and not providing the good services to the people need [them],” Roberson said. “CON does play a role in weeding out potential bad actors from coming in.”

Other legislative agenda items include creating new programs to attract and retain physicians, nurses, and other healthcare workers, as well as working with partners to incentivize hospitals to take more steps to secure patient data.

“Cyber security is a huge issue right now across a lot of industries, and healthcare is not immune to that,” he said. “A couple of years ago, actually, in 2023, Singing River Health System had a substantial breach, a ransomware attack, which affected over 800,000 patients... and almost half a million files were released by the hackers.”

“That’s a significant threat, and oftentimes these hackers are... very sophisticated,” Roberson continued. “So, we’re looking at ways to strengthen cyber security protections so that our patients’ files and our patients can be confident that their information is protected as best [it can be].”

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