The politics holding back Medicaid expansion in some Southern states

by Drew Hawkins for Arkansas Advocate

For Roderick Givens, a radiation oncologist, the expansion of Medicaid isn’t just a policy issue. He practices medicine in a rural area in the Mississippi Delta and he sees daily how Medicaid coverage could help his uninsured patients.

“I can’t tell you the number of patients who I see who come in with advanced disease, who have full-time jobs,” Givens said. “They haven’t seen a physician in years. They can’t afford it. They don’t have coverage.”

This spring, the Mississippi Legislature considered but ultimately failed to expand Medicaid, which would have extended coverage to around 200,000 low-income residents. Mississippi is one of 10 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid, the state and federal health insurance program for people with low incomes or disabilities.

Seven of those states are in the South. But as more conservative-leaning states like North Carolina adopt it, the drumbeat of support, as one Southern state lawmaker put it, grows louder.