Jackson Free Press

David Becker believes the 21st century will be the health-care era. Based on a report Becker co-authored, Mississippi will practically be stuck in medieval times if policymakers continue to fight Medicaid expansion.

Even with the intense debate of the last year or so, the conversation over Medicaid expansion in Mississippi has focused on the costs and benefits to the state and to the health-care industry in broad terms. Becker's report, commissioned by one group promoting Medicaid expansion, goes a step further and looks at Medicaid expansion's effects on regions and local communities. It shows that billions of dollars are at stake in Medicaid.

The report, authored by Becker and Michael Morrisey, both researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, affirms previous studies showing millions of dollars in additional economic activity would come from adding more people to the state-run insurance program for the poor.

"It's a deal that seems too good to pass up," said Becker, speaking at the Jackson Medical Mall Dec. 12

That deal is outlined in Becker and Morrissey's analysis showing that Mississippi taxpayers would spend $579 million between 2014 and 2020, but draw more than $1.4 billion in tax revenues as a result, and generate upwards of $14 billion in total new economic activity. It would also create 20,000 new jobs and provide an $848 million increase in net state and local tax revenues.

Those benefits would eventually trickle down to cities and counties. Jackson would get the biggest boost, representing more than $1 billion in total economic activity over the seven-year period between 2014 and 2020. In the Jackson metropolitan area, including parts of Madison and Rankin counties, that benefit would be closer to $2 billion.

Medicaid expansion would also mean 2,712 new jobs for the capital-city area, Becker and Morrissey wrote.

"When new Medicaid enrollees have access to health coverage, they will also have more disposable income to directly spend in other sectors of the economy such as grocery and retail stores and even housing," Becker said.

"The billions in new federal funding would create a demand for thousands of new jobs, a healthier workforce and a stronger state economy."

Medicaid-expansion advocates, who lost a legislative fight to expand the program, believe the numbers make a solid case for lawmakers to revisit expansion in the next session.

"By refusing to expand Medicaid, our state leaders are costing our cities and counties thousands of new jobs and economic activity," Roy Mitchell, the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program's executive director, said in a news release.

Despite backing from the health-care industry, Medicaid expansion has remained a casualty of politics in Mississippi and several other states where Republicans are standing firm against the Affordable Care Act.

Championed by President Barack Obama, the ACA was designed to force states to grow their Medicaid rolls or lose federal funding, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2012 that states did not have to expand Medicaid. Justices upheld rest of the health-care law as constitutional.

Gov. Phil Bryant. House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves have all opposed Medicaid expansion, saying the state could not afford to add more people to Medicaid, citing a five-year-old study Gov. Haley Barbour commissioned in 2010.

Democratic lawmakers failed in passing a Medicaid expansion bill in the 2013 legislative session, but state. Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, said lawmakers should take another shot it in 2014.

"We have an opportunity to do something smart," Blount said.