Jackson Free Press

More than one dozen statewide health-care, civil-rights and religious organizations plan to leverage hundreds of thousands of their members, parishioners and supporters to increase health care access for 300,000 Mississippians.

Specifically, the newly formed Mississippi Health Care Access coalition plans to press the Legislature to expand the federal-state Medicaid program, which federal law now allows.

Coalition members include Mississippi chapters of the American Lung Association, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and AARP as well as Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi, Catholic Charities, Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference, Mississippi Human Services Coalition, Mississippi Health Advocacy Program, Mississippi Center for Justice, Mississippi Economic Policy Center, Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, Southern Echo and the Children's Defense Fund's southern regional office.

Rep. Cecil Brown, a Jackson Democrat, called Medicaid a "huge deal" that will dominate the legislative session, which convenes in January. Gov. Phil Bryant has been emphatic in his opposition to Medicaid expansion, citing costs as the reason.

An Institutions of Higher Learning report released in October concludes that adopting the Medicaid expansion would cost Mississippi taxpayers approximately $109.4 million total and create more than 9,100 jobs by 2020, when the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is fully implemented.

That works out to state laying out $364 per person over six years to provide health care and boost the state's lagging economy.

Brown, who sits on the House Medicaid Committee, said the expansion would benefit working people in Mississippi.

"We're talking about people who work 40 (to) 50 hours a week whose employers don't provide health insurance," Brown said.

Any Medicaid expansion bill would contain a provision to require the Legislature to reconsider the legislation, probably in three years when the federal government's 100 percent coverage for the expansion decreases, Brown said.

Brown said he's talked to Medicaid Committee Chairman Rep. Bobby B. Howell, R-Kilmichael, who he said has been open to discussing Medicaid expansion.

The presenter at this morning's Friday Forum at Koinonia Coffee House, Brown compared Medicaid expansion to other economic-development projects, which often attract investment from state government.

"If a company came in and said 'We'll create 9,000 jobs and offer health care to your people for $300 each, we'd be all over it,'" Brown said.