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Many across the state have advocated for the expansion of Medicaid with assertions that the state will “come out better” with expansion than without it. Despite these assertations, it is important to remember that while the federal government provides a match to state funds, it is ultimately the state that foots the bill.

Medicaid is a joint state and federally funded program initially created to provide government health care for limited portion of the population. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, better known as “ObamaCare” the states were given the option to further expand eligibility for their Medicaid programs and have that expansion “matched” by the federal government.

Mississippi has wisely opted not to expand Medicaid. The federal government matches Medicaid expansion, but it is ultimately the responsibility of the state to pay a portion of the costs of the program. Time and time again, Medicaid expansion is pitched as “free money” from the coffers of Washington, but this money is not free.  

In the midst of the debates surrounding matching rates, federal funding, and expansion enrollment projections, many often forget Medicaid expansion's influence on increasing private health insurance costs. This would only be heightened in the event of Medicaid expansion.

Since Medicaid reimbursement rates are often much lower than private-sector rates, many doctors then pass on the extra costs by charging even more for private sector insurance. These extra costs lead to higher premiums for private health insurance. In turn, more individuals leave private health insurance and go to “cheaper” government programs like Medicaid. This cycle repeats, and the more people that leave private health insurance, the more expensive it becomes as doctors try to recuperate costs through the private sector. This coincides with an analysis conducted by the Heritage Foundation on an Ohio Medicaid expansion proposal.

Many new Medicaid enrollees would also find that doctors are less likely to accept Medicaid than the private coverage the enrollee might have had. In a study done by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC), the data concluded that as little as 66 percent of doctors accepted Medicaid in many states.

Thus, rather than expanding healthcare access, Medicaid expansion could actually cut down healthcare access as more and more individuals are forced to move to coverage that is not as widely accepted as private insurance. Despite this lower-quality health insurance, many individuals would have little choice in their leaving private health insurance due to the inflated premiums that would be influenced by Medicaid expansion in the first place.

When considering the question of Medicaid expansion, state leaders should take more into account than just the raw numbers that determine how much “free money” would come to Mississippi through Medicaid. Even if the Mississippi government “came out better” on a short-term basis, the long-term effects of government expansion ultimately interfere with the private sector and increase the cost of health insurance.

Critical race theory is a deeply divisive ideology that threatens to tear America apart. It demands that we stop seeing fellow Americans as individuals, and instead regard them in terms of racial identity. It is a rejection of the principle that all of us are created equally.

While lots has been said about critical race theory in more progressive parts of America, it is often assumed that in supposedly conservative states like Mississippi, this extremist agenda does not exist.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. This Marxist-like ideology is being taught in Mississippi’s educational system.

According to our report, Combating Critical Race Theory in Mississippi, the Mississippi Department of Education suggests teachers make use of professional development programs provided by organizations such as the Zinn Education Project and Facing Ourselves & History. Both these organizations promote radical ideas associated with Critical Race Theory. The Zinn Project even advocates for the abolition of Columbus Day and for the payment of reparations for African Americans.

Critical race theory is even more explicitly promoted at college level. Universities in our state are not only administered in accordance with critical race theory, but it also impacts what students are taught. 

Mississippi State’s English Department website refers to “systemic racism” perpetuating “white supremacy” in America. It demands “structural change” to achieve “racial justice.”[1] The department goes on to explain how it has “begun re-envisioning our curriculum to address its emphasis on white authors and literary traditions” and how it is responding to the fact that the “demographics and dynamics” of the department are those of a “Predominantly White Institution (PWI).”

The University of Mississippi’s Department of Writing and Rhetoric teaches courses that explore “how whiteness is constructed.” There, students analyze “whiteness as it has evolved over time” and consider the relationship between white identity and “white nationalism, white supremacy, white privilege and whiteness.”

One of the reasons why many Mississippians are unaware of the extent to which critical race theory is being taught is the fact that those who promote this agenda seldom characterize what they are teaching as being "critical race theory." Often, they will reject the term entirely.

This means that we need to look beyond the label and better understand what it is that educators are actually teaching.

In our report, we identify some of the underlying ideas behind this ideology. 

We then go on to recommend a series of practical steps that can be taken to tackle critical race theory. 

You can read our full study and recommendations to Mississippi leaders HERE.

[1] https://www.english.msstate.edu/news/mississippi-state-department-english-statement-protest-against-racism-and-police-violence/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Jackson, MS): Critical race theory is being taught and promoted in Mississippi, according to a new report out today from the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

The report defines critical race theory as an ideology that maintains the United States is founded on racial supremacy and oppression. 

The report shows that critical race theory is a Marxist-like belief system. While conventional Marxists divide society between the oppressors and the oppressed, critical race theorists have replaced the class categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat with the identity categories of white and black. 

“This makes critical race theory a deeply divisive ideology, as well as an extremist one,” explains Douglas Carswell, President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. “Critical race theory ultimately seeks to overthrow the existing economic and political order and fundamentally change America.”

Today’s report reveals that:

“For all the assurances that critical race theory is not being taught in Mississippi, when you look at the evidence, it clearly is” added Carswell. “Mississippians need to know that a deeply dangerous and divisive ideology is being advanced through our public education institutions. Mississippi leaders need to take action to combat this.”

Today’s report sets out a six point plan to combat critical race theory. Included in the report’s recommendations are:

Read the full report HERE.


For more information or to request an interview with Mississippi Center For Public Policy President Douglas Carswell, please reach out to Stone Clanton, clanton@mspolicy.

I used to laugh at the absurdity of "woke" academics. So much of what they advocated seemed so ridiculous.

I am not sure we should be laughing any more. "Woke" ideas have become dangerous, not merely daft.

Take, for example, critical race theory, which argues that the United States is founded on racial supremacy and oppression. This radical idea has spread out from college campuses into the workplace, government and even the military.

A form of Marxism, critical race theory divides society between the oppressors and the oppressed. But unlike old school Marxism, with its categorization by class, critical race theory categorizes Americans by race. 

This ideology is obviously deeply divisive. But so long as only a handful of academics thought like that, we could largely ignore it.

The trouble is that the "woke" ideas are increasingly becoming a kind of belief system for many of America’s elite. They now permeate many aspects of life in America – and if unchecked they risk tearing the republic apart.

This week the Mississippi Center for Public Policy publishes a report that looks at how widespread these ideas are within the public education system in our state.

We then set out a series of practical steps we believe our leaders need to take to ensure that this extremist agenda is not promoted using public money.
 
The United States was founded on the ideal that everyone possesses their own "inalienable rights." That principle, however imperfectly applied, helped to define the United States as a country that respected people as individuals. 
 
Critical race theory stands that ideal on its head, insisting instead that we define ourselves according to immutable characteristics. This ideology is profoundly un-American and anti-American. 

America is such an extraordinary success story. The USA, while not perfect, is a moral as well as a material achievement.

Our report sets out how we might replace a bad idea – the notion that America is intrinsically racist – with a good idea – that America is "the last best hope of earth.”

The need for medical care has been highlighted by the pandemic more than ever before. As a way to expand their coverage and reach as many patients as possible, doctors from across the country poured into Mississippi over the internet. While this effort was successful, some long-term reforms can be made so that doctors can continue to serve their patients using this technology.

Like many technologies, the growth of telemedicine has been both a growth in innovation and growth in adoption. While the basic technology itself has existed since the 1990s, innovation and advancement have allowed for the technology to offer more and more to patients every year. During Covid, the technology has seen exponential development and growth.  

In light of COVID-19, the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure allowed out-of-state physicians to perform telemedicine even if they do not possess a Mississippi medical license. However, these physicians were only allowed to serve patients “with whom they already have a pre-existing doctor-patient relationship.” Furthermore, even this limited exception was allowed only “until action is taken to lift the [COVID-19] emergency.”  

Given the expansive potential for telemedicine, official state policy should permit doctors to serve Mississippians regardless of the doctor’s geographic location and regardless of whether or not there is a pandemic ongoing. Under current law, an individual must be licensed in Mississippi to practice telemedicine in the state. Doctors from 29 other states can already have their medical licenses reciprocated and practice in Mississippi through the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact (IMLC). Despite this, current state policy does not permit telemedicine practice by doctors from the remaining 20 states.

Such a policy inhibiting Mississippians from receiving telemedicine care from these 20 states is a boundary to healthcare access. Several medical institutions with world-renowned expertise are located in states that are currently not included in the IMLC. Such institutions include Weill Cornell Medicine (New York), Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (California), H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center (Florida), and others. Yet, unless a doctor from these institutions happened to be directly licensed in Mississippi, they could not offer their services via telemedicine in the state.

Meanwhile, states like New Mexico enacted legislation  all the way back in 2001 that instructs the state medical board to issue “a telemedicine license to allow the practice of medicine across state lines to an applicant who holds a full and unrestricted license to practice medicine in another state or territory of the United States.” (emphasis added). New Mexico saw the importance of telemedicine even in 2001 when the technology was far less developed and proven. Telemedicine proved its effectiveness during Covid. There is no reason why the Mississippi legislature should not enact the same policy -despite the unfortunate fact that it would be doing so over 20 years after New Mexico.  

Mississippi's telemedicine policies are behind the technological curb. The state is long due for a reform that allows for the leverage of this modern technology so that no matter where they are in the country, doctors can serve Mississippians.

It can be easy to think about terms like “inflation” as theoretical ideas and not connect how much macroeconomics affects the lives of average Americans. But a recent development is an unfortunate example of just how much inflation actually affects average Americans. Retail chain “Dollar Tree” has recently announced it is raising prices above 1 dollar.

Dollar Tree raised prices in response to inflation that made it increasingly challenging to offer products within the one-dollar range. To combat this, the company is increasing many of its products from $1.00 to $1.25 and $1.50. This move to raise prices is ultimately a part of the greater increase in prices across the entire economy as the nation reels from the effects of massive government spending increases.

In early January 2020, the United States money supply was approximately $15.5 trillion, according to data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. Just over a year later, in September 2021, the money supply had increased to $20.9 trillion. To put this increase in perspective, a similar $5.4 trillion increase in the money supply had previously taken seven years. The money supply in 2012 was about $10.1 trillion, and it did not build up to $15.5 trillion until January 2020.

Such a drastic inflationary increase in the money supply has real effects. The more dollars that are in the economy, the less valuable the dollar will be. The changes at Dollar Tree are a practical indicator of this basic economic principle of supply and demand. When the government prints more money to “pay” for its spending wish list, the money supply increases, and it becomes less valuable.

Even without the massive inflation of the present day, in former days the nation saw the demise of penny candy, nickel postage stamps, and 50-cent cups of coffee. Yet, in today's economic environment, not even the dollar itself carries enough value to support a line of products. As the government continues down a path of disastrous policies, one can only speculate what else the recent wave of inflation has in its crosshairs.

As the federal government considers raising the debt ceiling, pushing forward massive spending plans, and increasing the deficit more than ever before, everyday Americans are just trying to live their lives and support their families. The policies of a big government are inevitably detached from the challenges that its people face every day. As more spending and debt is enacted in the marble halls of Washington, thousands of Americans will be handing the store clerk a bigger chunk of change at the local Dollar Tree.   

Many on the Left claim to be supporters and advocates of blue-collar working families, such as farmers and ranchers. “Tax the Rich” they say. But an example of how untrue these claims are can be found in a proposed change to the capital gains tax that would hurt many family farms.

Biden has proposed an increase on the capital gains tax. The political optics of this proposal have sought to portray the tax increase as something almost exclusively towards the easy political targets, such as luxurious business tycoons and stock market billionaires. Noticeably absent from these portrayals of the policy are the farming families that would also be affected by the proposals.

As technology and automation grow, farms are growing in size as production costs go down and farmers can manage more land. For example, in 1920, the average Mississippi farm was 67 acres. Fast forward to the present day, and the average farm is 300 acres. This is a 350 percent increase in average farm size. Also, according to the 1920 Mississippi agricultural census, the state had around 272,000 farms and 29 percent of the Mississippi workforce were directly employed by agriculture.1 Today, the state has 34,700 farms and about 8 percent of the workforce is directly employed2 by agriculture. Despite this 87 percent decrease in the total number of farms, the number of cultivated acres has decreased by only 42 percent.

Less farms means that there are fewer farmers today, and the average farmer will own more land. This means that while the farmers of former days generally had less land and assets, today’s individual farmers will often have hundreds of acres that they can farm with relative ease because of modern technology.

This means many modern farmer’s estates have more value -value that the government can potentially tax upon their death through tax policy changes. Under current law, no capital gains taxes are imposed on the value of farms being sold by heirs. If a farmer buys land for $400,000 and the farm is worth $800,000 at the time of death, the heirs of the farm would not have to pay any capital gains tax if they chose to sell the farm.

But the Biden tax hike would change that. The proposal imposes capital gains tax on the sale of any estate valued at more than $2 million for all land and equipment.3 Such a measure fails to recognize the growing size of family farms. Such a change penalizes the increase in farm size that mechanization and innovation has enabled. 

While Washington is putting trillions of dollars of debt on future generations, it adds insult to injury for those same leaders to tax the heirs of hardworking farmers. Farmers have the tools and technologies to produce more than ever before. An increase in the capital gains tax goes directly against these accomplishments and skims off of the fruits of American farmers’ productivity and increased success.   

[1] This only counted actual farmers and does not include indirect agricultural employment.

[2] See footnote 1

[3] $1 million for single individuals  

Since the advent of Covid-19, the subject has all but dominated the public discourse and debate. In the wake of such discussions, different opinions abound as individuals respond to new information and interact with old information. There have been true claims, false claims, and everything in between.

In the name of combating misinformation, the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure recently issued a new policy that vaguely prohibits medical misinformation from being spread by doctors, particularly on social media. There are several unanswered questions surrounding the policy that are unclear in the wording of the policy.

Under Section 73-25-29 of the Mississippi Code and other sections of the law, the different types of unprofessional misconduct that are grounds for disciplinary action against a physician are specified in fairly clear language. Such grounds could include narcotics violations, falsifying documents, conviction of a felony, and other clearly defined violations. While the Board is given a broad degree of discretion, the state Code is fairly specific.

Contrasting with this specific language is the vague use of misinformation as grounds for discipline, which becomes especially complex when the dynamic of social media is named in the written policy. The new policy states that physicians "must share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven." Furthermore, the policy states that "physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action." This language is unclear, especially in the social media world of "Likes," "Shares," and "Retweets."

For instance, a physician might reshare, or even write, a Facebook or Twitter post containing content that would be deemed as misinformation by the consensus. However, the post might also have some helpful information that would not be deemed misinformation by the consensus. Could the physician be disciplined?

While some would have us believe that social media posts and general public discourse can be separated into nice, neat categories of "Accurate Information" and "Misinformation," it is not even remotely that simple. Rather, in a world of imperfect people, much of the content of social media and elsewhere is partially accurate and partially inaccurate, but free-thinking adults generally have the ability to discern between the two. Furthermore, even a casual review of the public discourse since the advent of Covid, would reveal that even the consensus itself has changed multiple times.

For instance, many will remember when the proposition that Covid leaked from a Chinese lab was officially labeled by many as "misinformation" and a wild conspiracy theory, leading Facebook itself to ban such content. But in a matter of months, investigations and Congressional testimonies suggested that this was a very real possibility. Facebook lifted the ban, follow-up investigations were initiated, and those who had been silenced were no longer labeled as distributors of misinformation.

If the medical Board had an officially written disinformation policy based on consensus, and it had actually disciplined a physician for spreading the lab leak theory, would it have had to walk back on its actions? Worse, would the Board give restitution to the physician for the financial losses incurred by the wrongly imposed discipline?

Covid is a relatively new virus, and the consensus has changed as new information is being discovered. It is not at all far-fetched to suggest that this will happen again, and some who are currently outside the consensus will be shown to be correct as new information is brought to light.

All of these questions and complexities are important factors to consider. Some may claim that defining misinformation could be accomplished on a case-by-case basis during disciplinary hearings. But the vagueness of the language should not mean that physicians have to face a disciplinary hearing before they even have a full clarification on whether or not the Board’s misinformation policy was violated.

Rather than issuing policies that leave so many unanswered questions, policies should be clear on what constitutes misconduct that would lead to discipline. These are challenging times, and no one has all of the answers. Public discourse should be permitted to have the input of multiple viewpoints, especially when no final consensus has even been established. Rather than leaving physicians with little clarity for their social media use by employing vague misinformation rules, public policy should be clear so that all parties have the foundation of a clear rule of law.  

One of the most basic principles of economics is that there is no such thing as a free lunch; however, some people buy into the lie that the government can provide just that.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of the American way of life, but a major component of that change is how people respond to temporary economic hardship, cultivating an expectation for the government to solve their problems. In the midst of the pandemic, the government-imposed lockdowns brought about job losses, decreased spending, and economic hardship. As a short-term effort, the federal government issued direct payments to Americans. But many wanted this short-term effort to become permanent. In 2020, a Change.org petition arose, gaining support for making stimulus checks a permanent monthly occurrence. This demonstrates the apparent ignorance of what stimulus checks actually do and how they affect the economy.

As Brad Polumbo of the Foundation for Economic Education contends, stimulus checks really do not stimulate anything. Instead, all that stimulus checks do is redistribute wealth that the government has already attained because it does not have the power of a mystical Santa Claus to grant money for everyone out of thin air. It has to come from somewhere, and it just so happens that taxpayers, the very people that receive the stimulus check, are the ones responsible for paying for it. However, the truth of how “free” money from the government really is not free typically gets overlooked. The immediacy and novelty of the concept of receiving the money you did not have to earn somehow entices people enough to want to continue.

The irony is that despite the intention of stimulus checks to stimulate the economy, they never actually did so. A report by the Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker predicted that households earning more than $78,000 would only spend $105 of the $1400 stimulus check they receive. The whole purpose of the program was to get people to spend more so that the economy would continue to function at a somewhat normal capacity. However, many people took the stimulus check and instead saved it as the future of the pandemic remained uncertain at the time.

Thus, in effect, all that the stimulus check program provided was an immediate security blanket that will likely cost us much more down the road with inflation and other factors. In fact, Wayne Winegarden of the Pacific Research Institute released a study indicating that the economic trajectory will likely lead to higher pressure on interest rates, higher inflation, and growing economic distortions, especially as the Biden Administration pushes for higher taxes and increased regulation.

This evaluation of the stimulus program gives us insight into how government and free markets operate. Whenever a national crisis arises, the government’s automatic reaction is to bring itself into the situation and try to remedy the problem with some artificial solution.

Long-term prosperity does not come from stimulus checks. Prosperity comes when free markets are permitted to ebb and flow. Instead of imposing economically restrictive lockdowns, and then redistributing taxpayer dollars when economic breakdown ensues, government should allow people to fix problems themselves as they create new and innovative ways to meet new challenges, build markets, and improve their lives.

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