Texas and Florida may be in the news more when it comes to Republican-run state governments, but in the end, there's no better example of what Republicans want to accomplish with governance than the state of Mississippi and reducing its infrastructure to rubble in order to privatize and profitize as much of basic services as possible in one of the poorest states in the nation.
Mississippi’s healthcare crisis is worsening and an overhaul of the state’s “current system of care is unmistakably essential,” a leading medical group warned hours before the State Legislature was set to begin its 2023 session at noon Monday.
“The lack of access to healthcare for many Mississippians is currently a crisis, not a new crisis, but one that has been fermenting — and is getting worse,” the Mississippi State Medical Association said in a press release this morning. “As hospitals close across Mississippi, access to life-saving medical care becomes a real threat to all Mississippi. While the debate rages on as to why our hospitals are closing, the immediate crisis progressively engulfs us.”
Across the state, several hospitals have closed or cut services in recent months. During a hearing with lawmakers in November, Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney warned that 38 of Mississippi’s rural hospitals, or about 54%, could close. Mississippi is already the poorest state with some of the worst health outcomes, including during the pandemic.
“That is a situation that is intolerable from an economic standpoint — to lose 54% of our hospitals in the state — much less from an access to care perspective,” PBS reported Edney saying in November.
For years, health-care professionals, including those at MSMA, have said that the State’s refusal to expand Medicaid to more working Mississippians has contributed significantly to hospital closures. Medicaid expansion was part of former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, giving states funds to expand Medicaid access to people who make too much money for traditional Medicaid, but who do not earn enough to afford private insurance and are not eligible for ACA subsidies.
“Again, the healthcare crisis Mississippi now faces has been foreseeable for years and was indeed predicted,” MSMA said in its statement. “The fact is, there is a sizable gap that exists for working Mississippians who cannot afford private insurance, yet whose income is too much to qualify for Mississippi Medicaid. When these individuals need healthcare, hospitals are required to treat them regardless of their inability to pay. And because these individuals are uninsured, the hospital is not compensated for necessary care. Such an economical strain on hospitals is not one that even the most successful private business could not endure.”
Republicans don't want hospitals that work. They want sick, broken people who are forced into serfdom or worse, in communities that are sick and broken, so they can blame the Black, Native, and Latino people in those communities and write them off. They don't want them to be alive, because they're going to vote Democratic, and if they are dead and dying, Republicans will continue to always win and always be in power so they can continue to get rich.
They don't want government to help the poor, the disenfranchised, the minority, the struggling. They want those parts of government permanently dismantled. They need a permanent underclass to exploit, and that means refusing to fund the parts of government that provide help to those who need it the most, because Republicans figure those people are the least productive to exploit and the most likely to vote against them for trying to exploit them anyway.
Since 2013, Mississippi’s Republican leaders have rejected more than $10 billion from the federal government that could have been used to expand Medicaid, even with the federal government offering to pay between 90% and 100% of the cost.
As it sought a buyer last year, the struggling Singing River Health System in Jackson County said the lack of Medicaid expansion was a primary driver of its financial troubles and those of other hospitals that “provide significant care for underinsured and uninsured populations.” Singing River employs about 3,500 people across three hospitals and three-dozen clinics.
Gov. Tate Reeves has long opposed expanding Medicaid, dating back to his time leading the Mississippi Senate as lieutenant governor when he dismissed it as “Obamacare expansion.” The current Republican lieutenant governor, Delbert Hosemann, has expressed interest in expanding Medicaid, but Reeves and GOP leaders in the Mississippi House have continued to oppose the idea.
Mississippi is one of just a dozen states that have declined to expand Medicaid. Despite representing less than a quarter of the country, states that refused to expand Medicaid accounted for 74% of all rural hospital closures between 2010 and 2021, an American Hospital Association report found last year.
No health care, no schools, no roads, no water, all misery to exploit. That's what they want. Survival for those who can maybe struggle hard enough to maybe afford to see a doctor, the rest worked so hard that they die young and never see a dime in Social Security or Medicare and never qualify for any other government programs because they "make too much money."
States keeping their subjects poor, uneducated, and too tired to do anything about it.
The Republican way.