Point by Dr. Ed Holliday
Now’s the time for Mississippi’s legislature to extend health care coverage to an estimated 170,000 Mississippians. With new enhanced blockchain technology combined with the already proposed plan from the Mississippi Hospital Association (MHA), we can expand our Medicaid program without cost to Mississippi taxpayers. If innovatively constructed, the workers eligible for the Medicaid extension program will bring a 90% federal match to 10% raised through a combination of the existing MHA plan and the use of blockchain technology. Two years ago blockchain health care administration was an experiment, but now it is a reality in many places. Have you ever heard of these blockchain terms – distributed ledger technology, block finality time, nodes, miners, validators, scalability, decentralization, signature aggregation, block defi, DApps, sharing, or staking? Knowledge of how blockchain technology works is not necessary for everyone to understand, but it is ready.
Blockchain technology experts in the health care fields are using awesome ways to reduce costs and enhance health care. Mississippi has the opportunity to not only help our fellow Mississippians who need health insurance coverage, but to also lead the nation into advanced technology health care solutions.
Increasing Mississippians access to health care is a win/win/win proposition for our legislators! More health care means entrepreneurs who take risks to build their businesses will be able to hire more employees. Conservatives who complain about Mississippi’s poor worker participation rate will see that statistic dramatically improve (this was a Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann campaign talking point.) Right now, if a husband and wife both work in low-wage jobs with no health insurance, it becomes necessary for one of them to quit their job so that their family can qualify for Medicaid. Providing more healthcare, more jobs, and the boost to our economy will be like a balm of Gilead to statewide wounds of poverty. Rural hospitals will get a positive financial boost. The win/win/win effects will create economic waves blessing everyone. Let’s make it happen.
COUNTERPOINT
Counterpoint by Rev. James HullMore and more conservatives are coming around to supporting the expansion of Medicaid, especially in the South, when part of the original resistance was it would eventually be a burden that would fall on the states. That is no longer as much of an issue.
Hopefully, this new-fangled blockchain technology will aid in the issue gaining more support.
I can think of a better reason, though, to expand Medicaid in Mississippi: sick and dying citizens.
As far back as 2015, nearly 800,000 Mississippians were enrolled in Medicaid. Out of Mississippi’s 3 million citizens today, one-fourth is on the mostly federally-funded program, including children on the children’s health insurance, CHIPS.
Mississippi is a poor state, and the COVID-19 pandemic has made us even poorer, more unemployed and sicker. Hospitals, already stretched beyond their limits because of COVID, are still duty-bound to see sick patients who have no medical insurance, with little chance of recouping the $1,500 to $3,000 expenditure per admittance they have to lay out. Poor parents with sick children and the elderly who have no health care coverage wait until the very last minute to seek medical services … at the emergency room, when prevention is no longer what’s viable. So, hospitals are getting broker and the population is getting sicker.
Much of that can be remedied with Medicaid expansion.
Years ago, during the Haley Barbour administration, Gov. Barbour constantly sent mixed signals regarding Medicaid, saying it needed reform, not expansion. More recently, Barbour’s successor, Phil Bryant, all but strangled Medicaid to death in the state, actually refusing the federal matching dollars. Current Governor Tate Reeves has maintained that stance.
All the points already made, including the money-saving technology and the favorable federal-state matching formula, are on point. But the strongest point to be made for Medicaid expansion is the need for compassionate, complete health care coverage.
Talk of saving money is good, talk of saving lives is even better.