JACKSON-Jerri Watson wants to continue living on her own and says without Medicaid that’s not possible. Watson, 44, was born with cerebral palsy and cannot hold a full-time job. Her income from Social Security and disability payments is just under $600 a month. She also receives housing assistance to pay for a modest one-bedroom apartment.
Since she can’t afford private health insurance, Watson depends on Medicaid a federal-state program that provides health coverage for the needy, aged, blind and disabled.
Medicaid covers the shots Watson needs every four months to prevent muscle spasticity. It also allows her to get prescriptions for $1 per refill, and she takes drugs for several conditions, including severe heartburn.
“Everybody deserves to have a rich, rewarding life,” Watson said last week. “They shouldn’t just be stuck in a corner somewhere and forgotten.”
Mississippi’s Medicaid program is running at least $148 million over budget for the year that ends June 30, and state officials are scrambling to save the program. Lawmakers have been warned Medicaid will go broke by late February unless they act quickly.
Watson worries what will happen if legislators decide to cut medical services or require her to pay more from her own pocketbook.
“It scares me that there’s not going to be anything there,” she said at the Capitol as she and others lobbied for programs to help the disabled.
Rep. Frances Fredericks, D-Gulfport, is vice chairwoman of the House Public Health and Welfare Committee. She said she has received dozens of calls from people concerned about possible Medicaid cuts.
She tells them there are no plans to eliminate services.
“But, to be realistic, something might have to be scaled back,” Fredericks said in an interview.
Legislators say they’re considering several options, including decreasing fees the state pays to physicians, pharmacists and other Medicaid providers. Providers protest that if state support shrinks, fewer doctors, hospitals and others will be willing to give care to the poor.
Dr. W. Joseph Burnett of Oxford, director of the state Board of Medical Licensure, said he has treated many poor patients in his day, but most doctors can’t afford to lose money.
“There gets to be a place where you have to be practical about it,” Burnett told legislators earlier this month as they discussed reducing providers’ funds.
“I have long been communistic, as most of you believe,” Holland told the health providers, some of whom barely smiled in response.
Holland said he thinks everyone with a Mississippi medical license should be required to treat Medicaid patients. It’s an idea he has never tried to write into law, though he admits he is sometimes tempted.
Legislators are looking in several other directions to deal with the Medicaid deficit.
They might tap into a health care trust fund established with the settlement from a tobacco lawsuit in the late 1990s. The state rakes in millions of dollars a year from tobacco companies. Some lawmakers say it’s possible to use the trust fund without eroding the principal by intercepting payments before they land in the fund.
Officials have mentioned decreasing the number of prescriptions available per patient. Since 1999, each Medicaid patient has been allowed up to 10 prescriptions a month; the previous allotment was five a month.
Lawmakers also could increase the $1 per refill that patients pay for prescriptions. Federal law allows states to charge patients up to $3 a refill.
Gov. Ronnie Musgrove last week proposed moving $48 million from a rural roads program into Medicaid, and borrowing money to pay for the roads. He also said the state could reap $100 million by demanding that large businesses pay their sales tax collections weekly instead of monthly, and that the payments be made electronically.
Tax Commissioner Ed Buelow said Musgrove’s suggestion could bring $47 million, but he doesn’t see how it can bring $100 million. Many companies lack the equipment to submit tax collections electronically, and the Tax Commission has too few employees to handle weekly payments, Buelow said.
Mississippi isn’t alone in struggling with Medicaid.