Health Advocates Decry Lack of Medicaid Expansion

BY EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. — Groups supporting low-income Mississippi residents say elected officials are hurting hundreds of thousands of people by not expanding Medicaid.

Roy Mitchell of the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program says Tuesday that 300,000 people are missing out on health coverage that would be fully paid by the federal government for now. After the next couple of years, the federal government would pay 90 percent of the cost.

The health law signed by President Barack Obama allows states to expand Medicaid to people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $15,000 a year for one person. In Mississippi now, the income cutoff is about $5,500 for one person.

Gov. Phil Bryant and other Republican leaders say they don’t believe promises of future federal funding for Medicaid expansion.