Business Blog

The dictionary defines “tyranny” as oppressive power exerted by government. Founder Thomas Jefferson warned “Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” Is a taint of tyranny infecting our Medicaid standoff? Compare the Senate’s actions with those [...]

Most politicians know Mr. Pot should think twice before calling Mr. Kettle names. Oh, they can enthusiastically besmirch each other’s policies and positions, but name calling besmirches the namer more than the named. So it was in Rep. Steve Holland’s hand written note last week to Gov. Phil Bryant. “I think you’re a fool to [...]

Where have you been? That’s a question Mississippi’s hospital executives should have to answer as the Legislature winds down and Republican leaders in both houses refuse to think pragmatically about expanding Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act. The hospital CEOs and the Mississippi Hospital Association seem to have been largely absent from the wrangling [...]

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal are both making national health care news, with Bryant declaring that no one in Mississippi or elsewhere in the nation is without health care and Jindal for cutting off Medicaid funding that provides hospice care for the terminally ill. Jindal expects his state to save from [...]

Mississippi and other states reluctant to accept full participation in the Affordable Health Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid learned today they can forget about gaining a full share of Obamacare funding. Gov. Phil Bryant and Republican leaders in the Legislature have insisted the state won’t join in the expansion of Medicaid to cover more than [...]

Expanding Medicaid to take in more than 300,000 of Mississippi’s uninsured working poor would cost the state about $95 million a year by 2025, though the federal government would be injecting from $800 million to $1 billion in Medicaid payments into the state’s economy annually. That’s a key conclusion reached in an analysis of a [...]

Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney is advising Gov. Phil Bryant not to act hastily in committing either way on a federal offer to expand Medicaid to tens of thousands of uninsured Mississippians. “We have asked the governor to refrain from committing to anything for the time being,” Chaney said, calling for more time to explore [...]

Pepper Crutcher, a labor and employment law attorney in Balch & Bingham’s Jackson office, finished reading Chief Justice John G. Roberts’ opinion on the Affordable Care Act by mid-morning Thursday. One clear conclusion, according to Crutcher, is that Roberts knows a tax when he sees one. Call Obamacare’s health-care mandate whatever you like, the monetary [...]

Gov. Barbour told the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance on Thursday that Medicaid is “overburdened and unsustainable,” adding that the piling up of future costs would be “fiscally irresponsible.” His remarks can be read in full here.