'Poor folks trying to make it as best we can': surviving Mississippi's miserly healthcare system

[marmar]

‘Poor folks trying to make it as best we can’: surviving Mississippi’s miserly healthcare system
The poorest and blackest state in the US declined to expand Medicaid, leaving many citizens without coverage

by April Simpson


This story was published in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit news organization that investigates inequality.

Jabriel Muhammad pays up to $40 when he sees a doctor at the community health center in Jefferson county in rural south-western Mississippi. And he goes to the center only when he is really ill. But there’s another price to pay for not having health insurance. In October, he was hit with a $1,394 hospital bill for an MRI scan to diagnose why he wasn’t breathing properly.

“We’re poor folks trying to make it as best we can,” said Muhammad, a 40-year-old self-employed carpenter and plumber. “If I make $10,000 with the work that I do in a year, that’s a nice feeling to me.”

In Mississippi, the poorest and blackest state in the US, single adults without children like Muhammad are not eligible for public health insurance, regardless of how little they earn each year. If he lived 30 miles west in Louisiana, across the Mississippi river, he could afford to see a doctor more often.

Louisiana is the only deep south state that expanded Medicaid under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which extended healthcare access for people who work but don’t have medical coverage. Most of the 2 million people in the US without expanded coverage live in eight states in the south, where the legacy of slavery continues to shape healthcare policies, efforts to alleviate poverty and the life circumstances of thousands of Black people. ...........(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/16/mississippi-miserly-healthcare-system

[Ray Bruns]

1. Maybe they can get on the Jesus's Blood healthcare plan.

[jimfields33]

2. How can Mississippi be so red

African Americans make up 37 percent of the state!

[marmar]

3. I'm guessing 9 out of 10 whites in MS votes Repug

[JustAnotherGen]

6. Voter Suppression

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/24/no-need-new-gop-voter-suppression-mississippi-were-already-there/

Notably absent from this phenomenon has been Mississippi, the state with the highest proportion of Black people (38 percent) in the nation. There was no need for the Republican-dominated state legislature to jump on the voter-suppression bandwagon: We already have some of the most restrictive laws in the nation. And recent developments show that changes to give greater voice to Mississippi voters won’t be coming anytime soon.

In 2012, the state passed a restrictive voter ID law, which took effect only after the Supreme Court’s Shelby v. Holder ruling the following year ended the need for federal preclearance of election-law changes in certain states, based on their history of race-based electoral discrimination.

Mississippi also does not allow no-excuse absentee voting or mail-in ballots in almost any form. Last summer, as many states expanded absentee ballot access in light of the covid-19 pandemic, Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, defended Mississippi’s inaction during an interview with CBS News:

“We do not allow mail-in voting in the state of Mississippi. We think that … our elections process, which has been in place for many, many years … ensures that we have a fair process in which we have the opportunity to limit fraud. We still have fraudulent claims every single election.”

[Celerity]

4. What a shit hole. Albania is a step up. Life under Rethug systemic control is a dystopian hellscape.

[Magoo48]

5. As Nina Simone so aptly sings "Mississippi Goddamn."

[crickets]

7. It should be a crime for states to turn down federal assistance this way. nt

[ck4829]

8. This should not be happening.