A bill that eliminates the income tax for most Mississippi workers has just passed the House, clearing a crucial hurdle in the process to becoming law. If the bill (HB 1439) passes, Mississippi workers would have thousands of extra dollars in their pocket each year.
The bill was authored by House Speaker Philip Gunn and co-authored by Rep. Trey Lamar, Rep. Jason White, Rep. Jeffrey Guice, Rep. Dan Eubanks, Rep. Brady Williamson, Rep. Steve Hopkins, Rep. Chris Brown, Rep. Dana Criswell, Rep. Gene Newman, Rep. Bill Kinkade, and Rep. Jansen Owen.
The bill was passed with a vote of 85 to 34.
HB 1439 will now move onto the Senate for further consideration.
Everybody on a payroll in Mississippi today pays $1 in state income tax out of every $20 they earn – on top of all the other taxes they have to pay. Speaker Gunn’s proposal would raise the threshold for income tax, meaning the first $47,700 earned is tax exempt. For married couples, the threshold would rise to $95,400.
The bill would seek to phase out the income tax over time. It would also cut our state’s extremely high grocery tax in half, from 7% to 3.5% over time. To offset the lost revenue, the bill would increase the sales tax rate by 2.5% from 7% to 9.5%.
“This is great news for Mississippi”, said President of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, Douglas Carswell. “Giving workers a tax break will boost the state’s economy. It is also morally the right thing for folk to be free to keep more of what they’ve earned.”
“Instead of outright abolition of income tax, it looks like this proposal is a step towards phasing income tax out,” explained Carswell, whose think tank has been at the forefront of efforts to eliminate the tax.
“Instead of asking if we can afford to end the income tax, we ought to ask if we can afford not to. Fast growing southern states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida don’t have income tax. That’s why incomes in those states are rising and job creation is flourishing. Mississippi could do the same, too.”
“This bill will increase sales tax, which is not normally something we would agree with. However, if taxes must be levied, they should be levied on consumption, rather than income.”
“We are also relieved that this bill proposes lowering taxes on groceries. That will help families struggling to make ends meet.”
“Mississippi needs bold action to grow. We welcome Speaker Gunn’s leadership and encourage swift action by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.”
If you are interested in signaling your support for income tax elimination, then be sure to sign this petition.
The Mississippi House is considering a bill (HB 1364) that would increase gas taxes and increase debt for the people of Mississippi. The bill caps new bond debt at a whopping $2.5 billion. The bill also indexes the state gas tax according to the U.S. inflation rate. This means that the state gas tax would go up whenever the U.S. inflation rate goes up. Many economists are expecting the U.S. inflation rate to go up in 2021.
HB 1364 has passed out of committee and is already on the House calendar. A vote by the full House is expected early this week.
Responding to the proposed gas tax increase, President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy Douglas Carswell said, “It is wrong for politicians to be raising taxes on gas. History shows that these kinds of tax hikes are never temporary.”
“Making Mississippians pay more every time they fill up with gas means less money for them to spend on their own families. It will hit small businesses and folks who live in more rural areas especially hard.”
The gas tax bill also fails to fix a longstanding problem with how Mississippi funds transportation projects. A recent performance audit found that “a lack of competition in the bidding process has been proven to increase MDOT project costs.” More transparency is also needed so that the state prioritizes high-need projects that serve the most people and maximizes economic development opportunities.
“The idea behind this tax hike seems to be to create a pot of money to spend on infrastructure. Why not work out specifically what infrastructure we need, and set a budget for it, before taking more money from taxpayers? That way we might at least ensure we get value for money from any infrastructure projects.”
“Instead of figuring out ways to fleece taxpayers, we need politicians to focus on spending less, and spending it wisely.”
Mississippi lawmakers need to be able to control our own gas tax rate. This bill will tie our gas tax to the federal inflation rate, which is expected to go up. That means the gas tax will automatically go up, and Mississippi will not be able to do a thing about it. Why are we giving over control of our gas tax to Washington, D.C.?
A bill that eliminates the income tax for most Mississippi workers was unveiled today. If the law (HB 1439) passes, Mississippi workers would have thousands of extra dollars in their pocket each year.
Everybody on a payroll in Mississippi today pays $1 in state income tax out of every $20 they earn – on top of all the other taxes they have to pay. Speaker Gunn’s proposal would raise the threshold for income tax, meaning the first $47,700 earned is tax exempt. For married couples, the threshold would rise to $95,400.
“This is great news for Mississippi”, said President of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, Douglas Carswell. “Giving workers a tax break will boost the state’s economy. It is also morally the right thing for folk to be free to keep more of what they’ve earned."
“Instead of outright abolition of income tax, it looks like this proposal is a step towards phasing income tax out,” explained Carswell, whose think tank has been at the forefront of efforts to eliminate the tax.
“Instead of asking if we can afford to end the income tax, we ought to ask if we can afford not to. Fast growing southern states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida don’t have income tax. That’s why incomes in those states are rising and job creation is flourishing. Mississippi could do the same, too”.
“This bill will increase sales tax, which is not normally something we would agree with. However, if taxes must be levied, they should be levied on consumption, rather than income.”
“We are also relieved that this bill proposes lowering taxes on groceries. That will help families struggling to make ends meet."
“Mississippi needs bold action to grow. We welcome Speaker Gunn’s leadership."
Part II: The Mississippi Broadband Enabling Act of 2019
In February 2018, Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley announced an $11 million fiber infrastructure project aimed at spanning over 300 miles through 15 rural Mississippi counties. The project was a partnership between cable provider C-Spire and Entergy to bring the emerging fiber-to-the-home technology, which C-Spire had been offering to urban customers since 2013, to rural Mississippians.
Just one year later, Commissioner Presley lauded the strong bipartisan support for his new project, the Mississippi Broadband Enabling Act, which promised to bring fiber-to-the-home technology to the rest of rural Mississippi via the state’s rural electric cooperative associations (ECAs).
Presley told this author that the success of the legislation was the result of perfect timing. He cited the 2019 Mississippi statewide elections in which candidates (including incumbents) were well aware of the widespread support of Mississippians for universal broadband service availability.
Perhaps Presley was being modest. In reality, as reported by Geoff Pender in the Clarion-Ledger: “He created a task force that ended up with 1,310 members over 33 counties. … He got 60 county boards and 70 city councils to pass resolutions in favor of allowing rural co-ops to provide Internet service.”
Presley, in fact, succeeded in convincing lawmakers to reverse a 1942 law (enacted less than a decade after the state’s first rural electric cooperative association was established) that had barred ECAs from providing any product other than electric utility service to their customers. But beforehand, he had to win over enough of the state’s 26 ECAs to the idea that they could provide service even to the most remote customers (as they are required to do for electric utility service) without suffering financial losses.
At the time, only those with crystal balls could foresee the coming COVID-19 pandemic or that Congress – and the Mississippi Legislature – would authorize millions of dollars to make meeting their Internet service obligations that much easier – and less financially risky.
When HB 366 was passed, Presley called broadband “the electricity of the 21st Century,” and hoped for a day when children do not “have to sit in the McDonald’s parking lot to do their homework.” [Again, this was a year before COVID-19.]
Outgoing Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant boasted that, “If anyone wants to know how this bill got passed so quickly talk to the rural electric associations, because we do, and we listen to them.” Lawmakers passed the bill unanimously in the Senate after the House vote had just three “nays.” And with good reason – the ECAs serve 1.8 million of the state’s 3 million people and provide service to half of the state’s electric meters.
Similarly, Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation President Michael McCormick said farmers and ranchers in all 82 counties of Mississippi cited lack of connectivity as a top concern, along with the growing need for telemedicine and distance learning. Moreover, McCormick said, “I’ve talked to some real estate guys, and they tell me five or 10 years ago they would never have someone ask if high-speed Internet is available on a property. Now almost everyone asks the question.”
The 2019 law enables ECAs to establish or allow a separate broadband provider to use their systems to provide service. They can invest or use loans to cover startup costs, but cannot dip into revenues from providing electricity service to subsidize broadband. The law does not require ECAs to offer broadband, and several have so far not opted to do so.
No state funds were allocated for the ECAs, but some federal dollars were already available through existing programs. Then COVID-19 hit, and with it came a cornucopia of federal dollars and programs (see Part III of this series).
Responses by the state’s cooperatives varied widely. The Pontotoc Electric Power Association in February 2020 voted to discontinue its fiber-to-the-home project based on projected costs of $43 to $48 million and a paltry $1.9 million in currently available grant money. But by June 2020 (just before the Legislature voted to pass federal dollars to ECAs) 15 electric cooperatives were already working on plans to build fiber to the home in their coverage areas. All 15 were subsequently awarded one-to-one matching grants.
An elated Presley admitted that the ECA response “exceeds my wildest expectations. We had hoped we would have a couple step out there and then have a snowball effect.”
Part III of this report will discuss the federal CARES Act and federal funding for broadband stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Stay tuned.
***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***
Contact: Hunter Estes, [email protected]
Breaking: Mississippi Center for Public Policy Launches Mississippi Technology Institute
(Jackson, MS): The Mississippi Center for Public Policy, a free market think tank, announced the launch of the “Mississippi Technology Institute” (MTI) as a new division of the Center.
The Institute will promote policies that foster technology and innovation within our state. It will produce rigorous research to help inform the public policy debate in Mississippi and advocate a reform program which will make our state a center of innovation and growth.
“I am so excited that the Mississippi Center for Public Policy is today launching the Mississippi Technology Institute to develop and promote the right polices for our state” explained Douglas Carswell. “Technology is fundamentally changing how the world does business, and removing obstacles to innovation is essential in order to produce prosperity”.
Matthew Nicaud will serve as the Tech Policy Specialist for the Institute. In this role he will continue leading the Tech Talks series in which he interviews public policy and community leaders about high profile technology and innovation issues. He will also coordinate research efforts to help drive forward discussion of important tech-related policies in Mississippi.
Matthew noted, “Technology affects almost every part of our lives. MTI is in a prime position to help inform the debate surrounding new issues. I am excited for what we will accomplish to protect liberty and promote prosperity.”
“I am delighted that Matthew will be heading up this initiative. He has a wealth of knowledge and is full of enthusiasm for better tech policy.”
“From rural broadband roll out to our proposal for a so-called ‘sandbox’ bill to facilitating permissionless innovation, we have plenty of policy proposals that we will be pushing. Our aim is to help ensure that Mississippi has one of the most tech and innovation friendly policy approaches in the US.”
The website for the Mississippi Technology Institute can be found here: https://mspolicy.org/mississippi-tech-institute/
MCPP’s President, Douglas Carswell, is available for comments or interviews. Please contact Hunter Estes ([email protected]) with all requests.
***END***
***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***
Contact: Hunter Estes, [email protected]
Breaking: Senate Votes to Pass Fairness Act, Protect Female Sports
Senate Bill 2536 would require public school, university, and community college teams to be designated as either male, female or coed, as based on biological sex.
The bill is sponsored by state Sen. Angela Hill (R-Picayune) and has 21 cosponsors.
Polling of registered Mississippi voters shows that 79 percent support such legislation. The poll revealed that a state law to prohibit biological males from competing on female-only teams has broad support across political demographics: 87 percent of Republicans support the legislation, along with 83 percent of Independents and 65 percent of Democrats.
“Mississippians are breathing a sigh of relief now that Mississippi’s senators have voted overwhelmingly to protect the rights of girls and women who engage in competitive athletics,” stated MCPP Executive Vice President, Lesley Davis.
She continued, “Unlike what is happening in other states, our girls’ and women’s’ records will not be shattered by biological males competing against females. Women deserve to compete on a level playing field. Allowing males to compete in women’s sports destroys fair competition and women’s athletic opportunities.
“Mississippi owes a debt of gratitude to those in the Senate who stepped up and supported this legislation. We are especially grateful to Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann for his strong leadership and Senators Rita Potts Parks, John Polk, and Angela Hill. We also thank Speaker Philip Gunn, Rep. Becky Currie, Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes, and Rep. C. Scott Bounds for signaling their support in the House. Mississippi’s female athletes and future female athletes thank you.”
Three high school girls who run track in Connecticut filed a lawsuit last year challenging a policy of allowing male athletes to compete against girls. The three — Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, and Chelsea Mitchell — have been beaten consistently in track meets by a pair of transgender athletes born as males.
The lawsuit says the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s rules allowing transgender athletes to compete with girls poses a threat to Title IX because of physiological differences between men and women after puberty. Boys and men have more muscle mass and larger lungs and hearts and thus have the capacity to run faster and jump farther than most girls and women.
Title IX is a federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funds. The law, passed in 1972, has led to a massive growth in the number of athletic opportunities for women. The NCCA currently allows member schools to set their own policies in this area, with the condition that a biological male competing on a women’s team must undergo at least one year of testosterone suppression. Several studies suggest, however, that even after a year of such treatment biological males enjoy a physical advantage over their biologically female peers.
MCPP’s Executive Vice President for Public Policy, Lesley Davis, is available for comments or interviews. Please contact Hunter Estes ([email protected]) with all requests.
***END***
Mississippi has more than 2,600 hair braiders registered to practice their art with the state. And these numbers are only growing. They have more than doubled in the past six years.
Our neighbors to the southwest, Louisiana, as of 2019 had only 19 people who held the permit that is required to braid in the Pelican State. This, despite the fact, that Louisiana has a larger number of African Americans and a larger African immigrant population than Mississippi.
Why is there such a discrepancy?
Louisiana requires hair braiders to receive an “alternative hair design” permit that includes at least 500 hours of classes. And only three schools in the entire state even offer curriculum for that license.
But in Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour signed a law that freed the state’s African hair braiders from the irrelevant and unnecessary requirements of the Board of Cosmetology in 2005. Prior to that, hair braiders who wanted to teach others, such as Melony Armstrong, had to spend upwards of 3,200 hours in the classroom to learn cosmetology instructions that didn’t relate to hair braiding.
After the Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit against the Board on behalf of Armstrong, along with Christina Griffin and Margaret Burden, two women who wished to learn hair braiding from Melony and become licensed, the Mississippi legislature responded by freeing hair braiders and exempting them from cosmetology regulations.
And as we have seen, an economic boom has occurred within this profession.
Now, hair braiders only have to pay a $25 registration fee and complete a “self-test” on infection control. And despite what proponents of licensing might offer, even with the repeal of most regulations, there were zero health and safety complaints filed against braiders in Mississippi between 2006 and 2012.
The story of Melony Armstrong has been told many times in the fight for economic liberty, both in Mississippi and throughout the country – deservingly so.
This isn’t much different than the lawsuit we filed in 2019 on behalf of Dipa Bhattarai, an eyebrow threader who is originally from Nepal, where threading is a way of life. Bhattarai was running two successful stores employing four people, while in college, until the state shut her down.
Mississippi law requires eyebrow threaders to take 600 hours of classroom instruction, even though they won’t learn anything about threading in class. Rather, they will just spend thousands of dollars while not being allowed to work.
The cases of Melony Armstrong and Dipa Bhattarai are classic examples of government overreach and licensing boards having the power to regulate – and limit – who can practice within their field.
But as we saw with hair braiders, we can eliminate needless licensing barriers, put people back to work, and help improve the economy for everyone.
The legislature has now taken up legislation that would allow for folks like Dipa and Melony to practice their trade without burdensome licensing barriers. Unfortunately, the bill also seeks to bar unlicensed hair braiders from working in salons, even though they've been doing so for years now without any major issues.
There's no reason to take one step forward and two steps back. Let's remove unnecessary obstacles to work and not further hinder those who are already successfully working.
Once You Buy In, You Can Never Leave
A few years ago, my wife and I wanted to take our kids to Disney World. As I was looking into hotel reservations, the sales agent asked if I’d be interested in listening to a “special offer.” I did and decided to purchase the 4-day/3-night package for $150.
I knew there would be a hard sell in exchange for this offer. I knew they’d be asking me to buy into a timeshare. Being a researcher, I did my homework and compiled my questions. To be honest, I wanted it to work. I like to travel, I like to stay at nice places, and I like to save money. So I went into it with an open mind.
The more I learned about the timeshare program, however, the more I realized it wasn’t such a good deal. I figured I probably wouldn’t get into the properties I wanted. I realized it would cost more than it seemed. In particular, there would be escalating annual fees that would soon make participation unaffordable. In the end, I discerned I would have more choice, at a more affordable price, if I didn’t buy into a timeshare.
I’m not saying timeshares can’t work for some people. For most consumers, though, they aren’t a good option.
I think you know where I am going by now. When I look at Medicaid expansion, even a Medicaid expansion like the Healthy Indiana Plan or the Mississippi Cares Plan, it looks a lot like a timeshare offer.
These are five reasons why this offer is not a good deal for Mississippi:
First, there is the price tag. Medicaid expansion has been much more expensive in every state than predicted, even Indiana. According to the Foundation for Government Accountability, Medicaid expansion has cost states, on average, 157 percent more than expected.
Their solid research is backed up by years of experience in other states. Consider that in 2014, then-governor Mike Pence promised:
“HIP 2.0 will not raise taxes and will be fully funded through Indiana’s existing cigarette tax revenue and Hospital Assessment Fee program, in addition to federal Medicaid funding.”
By 2019, hospitals were begging the state to raise taxes to pay for Medicaid expansion. Declared the Indiana Hospital Association:
“Hospitals support HIP by paying a state-based Hospital Assessment Fee (HAF). In 2019, the total HAF will surpass $1B. The hospitals’ share is increasing at an unsustainable rate, and increasing the cigarette tax can help provide necessary relief to hospitals.”
The Legislature responded by raising multiple taxes and creating new ones. Noted the nonpartisan Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute:
“Lawmakers had to adjust their final calculations to account for lower predicted sales and income taxes and higher-than-anticipated Medicaid costs. They looked to broaden the sales tax base by targeting online transactions through ‘market facilitators’ and hotel booking sites, and passed a massive gaming bill in the waning hours before adjournment to bring a jackpot of casino licensing fees and wagering taxes.”
In Mississippi, Medicaid expansion is going to cost at least $140 million a year, likely closer to $180 million. Some estimates are that we can expect additional enrollment as high as 360,000. This will cost us probably $200 million a year. One problem is that this population could be pretty expensive to cover, unlike children.
By the way, Medicaid expansion only applies to able-bodied, working-age adults. It does not cover kids (CHIP already does that). It does not cover the elderly (Medicare already does that). It does not cover the handicapped or disabled (We already do that with multiple programs). Medicaid expansion is about insuring adults who either are working or should be working.
Based on this fact, we might also wonder whether part of the intent in expanding Medicaid is to encourage people to drop private insurance in exchange for government-subsidized insurance. Nor should we be surprised that this seems to happen in every state that expands Medicaid. In Louisiana, some estimates found 3,000 to 5,000 people a month were dropping private insurance to get on Medicaid. Another study states that more than half of potential Medicaid enrollees already have private insurance.
The second reason Medicaid expansion is like a timeshare is because it is being pushed as a one-size-fits-all solution to multiple, complex problems. (No, that timeshare will not suddenly make vacationing with your in-laws more enjoyable.)
There is an economic principle called the Tinbergen Rule. This rule states that independent policy objectives should be resolved by independent policy instruments. A recent paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) points out in this context that using hospital payments to finance care for the uninsured is just plain dumb – and expensive. (Another NBER paper also verifies that hospitals (not the poor) are the primary beneficiaries of Medicaid expansion.)
In other words, the problems Mississippi hospitals claim are going to be addressed by Medicaid expansion would be better dealt with by using more targeted solutions, whether it’s providing health care to low-income families or helping rural hospitals adapt to changing demographics.
Third, just like that timeshare you “own” is not really yours, Medicaid is not really under Mississippi’s control. Medicaid is largely controlled by the federal government. Under the current administration, this means there is virtually nothing Mississippi will be able to do to limit Medicaid enrollment and costs. Consider that we couldn’t even get the Trump administration to approve a mild work requirement. The Biden administration will be even less inclined to approve any such reforms. Consider, also, that so-called free-market Medicaid expansions, like Indiana’s, will require a waiver from the federal government. But it’s a very safe bet that the only waivers the Biden administration will be granting are for projects that expand Medicaid costs and enrollment.
The fourth reason Medicaid expansion is like a timeshare is because the quality of Medicaid is not very high. (Indeed, this is where my analogy fails because I’m sure many timeshares are comparatively better!)
No doubt, there are excellent providers in Mississippi’s Medicaid program. Overall, however, Medicaid outcomes are far worse than outcomes for patients with private insurance. Medicaid expansion doesn’t even improve physical health outcomes. This is one of the troubling findings from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment (OHIE), now hosted at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Another finding, as indicated above, is that hospitals – not patients – are the real beneficiaries of Medicaid expansion.
We don’t have space here to explain why Medicaid outcomes are so poor. Part of the reason is because many health care professionals refuse to participate in the program because of low reimbursement rates. (The “fix” for that will be socialized medicine.) Part of the reason is that Medicaid patients themselves don’t value Medicaid coverage all that much, as the OHIE study also found, and don’t seem all that invested in their own health care outcomes.
The fifth and final reason expanding Medicaid is a lot like buying into a timeshare is because the timeshare model works best if you have a presumption of scarcity. Today, the timeshare model does not work very well because we can use the power of technology – the Internet – to find better properties at a better price. We can also use technology to access properties on sites like Airbnb. If we could not do that and if there was a scarcity of properties, the timeshare model might make more economic sense.
I want to dwell on this point a bit more because this attitude of scarcity is deeply ingrained in Mississippi’s psyche. Good and valid reasons explain this, but it is important to recognize it nonetheless.
Fortunately, the health care economy is not a finite pie. Both the potential and actual supply of health care in America is not as scarce as it might seem. In fact, there are multiple pies – not just one or two – and these pies can get bigger.
Let me give an example.
A few years ago, a South African carpenter named Richard van As lost four fingers during a woodworking accident. Unable to work, Richard needed a new hand, but couldn’t afford a prosthetic hand. Instead of giving up, he started searching for alternatives. His quest led him to Ivan Owen, a puppeteer in Washington State. Working together and crowd-sourcing the initial costs, they used a 3-D printing press to manufacture a new hand for Richard. Today, people, especially children, can obtain such prosthetic hands for a couple of hundred dollars, if not for free. Perhaps you’ve seen them: Transformer hands, Iron Man hands, Spider Man hands, all manner of customizations are possible.
These kids, you see, could not get a prosthetic hand through Medicaid or even through their private insurance plans. The hands were too expensive: a $40,000 investment for a hand that a child would soon outgrow.
The scarcity mindset only sees the $40,000 hand and presumes there are only two ways of paying for it: public insurance or private insurance. We must reject this scarcity mindset for health care and for Mississippi’s economy.
We are told we have to expand Medicaid for a variety of reasons. All of them are rooted in this scarcity mindset.
First, you will hear that we should expand Medicaid because the federal money is just too good. The federal match for the expansion population is 90 percent. This conclusion is a non sequitur for two reasons. It’s like the timeshare guy offering to sell you a $10 million condo at a 90 percent discount. Once you get past how good the deal seems, you have to determine whether you have $1 million dollars. Second, the argument presumes virtually no one in Mississippi pays or will ever pay federal income tax.
Insofar as we do pay federal taxes, doesn’t it matter whether we forgo this federal spending if the evidence shows Medicaid expansion does not meet our needs? It is not true that other states are going to get our share of the Medicaid money pot. Medicaid is a welfare entitlement, which means that every person who is statutorily entitled to get on Medicaid has a claim to such services. There is no cap on Medicaid spending and there is not a separate Medicaid funding pot.
Granted, it is tempting to conclude that we should just take the federal money. Congress has no budget and America is bankrupt anyway. We might as well get ours while we can get it. If you believe this, the logical conclusion is that our federal government is absolutely corrupt and the whole budgeting process is a complete scam. In turn, the best play for Mississippi is to get in on the scam. If this is what you believe about America, so be it. But this Machiavellian view is not the legacy I want to leave to my children.
The second way the scarcity mindset comes into play regarding Medicaid is when we are told that medicine is socialized anyway, and that Medicaid expansion will be a more efficient way to provide health care to the poor. The suggestion here is that if we fund Medicaid expansion, commercial insurance costs – for private payers – will decline. This suggestion is explicit in material put out by the Mississippi Hospital Association.
A 2019 study by the state of Colorado utterly debunks this claim. The premise is that if fewer patients are uninsured and Medicaid pays more, hospital prices – and insurance premiums – for privately insured patients will decline. Medicaid expansion, we are told, is thus a good deal for commercial payers because it will reduce their costs. Except this is not happening – at least not in Colorado and certainly not in Indiana.
Indeed, according to the executive director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing, the hospitals used the “Medicaid expansion windfall to build free-standing [emergency departments], acquire physician practices, and build new facilities where there was already sufficient capacity. … Hospitals had a fork in the road,” concluded the director, “to either use the money coming in to lower the cost shift to employers and consumers or use the money to fuel a health care arms race. With few exceptions, they chose the latter.”
As an aside, Colorado’s experience gives us every reason to believe that expanding Medicaid will not primarily benefit rural hospitals in Mississippi, but urban hospitals.
The point I am making here is this: Even framing health care for low-income patients as a competition between Medicaid and private insurance is wrong headed. We can provide health care to these patients using other payment models and tapping into other supplies.
There are not only two pies: government-funded insurance OR private insurance.
There are other supplies of health care we are only beginning to utilize: direct primary care and telemedicine are two of them. There are also other payment models out there, such as health care sharing ministries and Association Health Plans. In many cases, it is government regulations that are preventing the emergence of more affordable choices.
Another option is hospital charity care. Mississippi has 111 hospitals: 45 are government-controlled (state/local, plus 4 federal); 31 are nonprofit; and 31 are for-profit. Shouldn’t public and nonprofit hospitals, which account for a large majority of hospitals in Mississippi, be mission-oriented toward providing subsidized care? In order to retain their tax-exempt status, nonprofit hospitals must provide a “community benefit.” This benefit is largely undefined and not particularly enforced.
This goes to show, however, that there are a multitude of free markets for health care and health insurance rather than the monolithic, health care bureaucracy that sees only the inefficient and expensive systems of Medicaid/Medicare and employer-based insurance as the only options. Again, there are not only two pies. There are multiple pies. Mississippi would do well to stop fighting over the scraps from D.C.’s broken health care promises and look toward creating a better framework that can help our people rise.
Given the cultural revolution in which we currently find ourselves, it should not be surprising that we are having debates over the once-obvious question of whether it is fair for biological males to compete against biological females in sports. Senator Angela Hill (R., Picayune) is leading the charge in Mississippi to protect the civil rights of our girls and women to compete in female sports by sponsoring Senate Bill 2536. Entitled the Fairness Act, this bill would ensure that only biological females compete on public school girls’ sports teams in our state.
This issue is of particular importance to me because many years ago, I was an athlete. I played four sports growing up, and I started my freshman year on the women’s basketball team at Mississippi State University. My high school basketball team was nationally ranked and finished first in Mississippi my junior year and second my senior year. We routinely practiced against our school’s varsity boys’ team, which had nowhere near our record or ranking, in order to improve our skills.
Despite our being at the top of our game in high school women’s sports with an All-American player and numerous others who went on to play college ball, the boys’ team handily beat us every time. Most of their starters could dunk a basketball. None of us on the girls’ team could.
Even now, no one makes a serious claim that biological boys/men in their natural state do not have a natural athletic advantage over biological women. Allyson Felix is probably the fastest female sprinter in the world, holding more records than Usain Bolt. Her best time for the 400 meter is 49.26 seconds, but just in 2017, that time was beaten over 15,000 times by boys and men. In other words, thousands and thousands of male athletes ran better than the fastest woman in the world.
Similar lopsided results occur in tennis. Venus and Serena Williams once boasted they could beat any male tennis player ranked outside the TOP 200. In 1998, a male ranked 203rd took them up on their wager and handily beat them both decisively, 6-1 over Serena and 6-2 over Venus. What if we never knew of a Serena and Venus Williams because they never had the space to compete and advance to the top of their sport?
As a little girl, I was inspired by the few female athletes that were featured prominently, females such as Coach Pat Head Summit, Cheryl Miller, Jackie-Joyner Kersey, Florence (Flo Jo) Griffith Joyner, and Chris Everett, and Martina Navratilova. Fortunately, a lot has changed in female sports since I played. For one, back in the ‘80’s, only our parents, high school coaches, friends, and boyfriends sparsely filled Humphrey Coliseum to watch our games. Today, at least prior to COVID, you can hardly get a ticket to the Mississippi State University Women’s home basketball games. In fact, the facility attendance record was recently set and is held by the MSU women’s team.
The incredible growth in women’s sports over the past almost 50 years has been in part the result of the enactment of Title IX in 1972, a federal law specifically designed to create equal opportunities and access for females in education and athletics.
Before Title IX, an estimated 3 percent of girls in America participated in sports; today, about two in five (more than 40 percent) of girls play sports. The number of women playing college sports has increased by more than 600 percent. The impact Title IX has had on young girls and adult female athletes is immeasurable. I for one am incredibly grateful for the added confidence, perseverance, work ethic, leadership skills, teamwork, and countless other life lessons sports gave me. It is not a coincidence that 98 percent of female CEOs played competitive sports. Competitive athletic experiences for young women carry over into their professional lives.
Yet, all of this hard-fought progress women have made in athletics could be eroded if our state lawmakers fail to ensure that our girls have a level playing field. This issue has been thrust into the limelight by the transgender rights campaign that is sweeping our nation.
Over the last few years in Connecticut, for instance, two biological males who had never distinguished themselves when competing on male track teams came to identify as girls/women. They were allowed to join their respective schools’ girls’ track teams and compete in track meets against biological girls. It should come as no surprise that they dominated girls’ track by winning 15 state championships, in the process stripping away 85 opportunities for biological females to advance to higher levels in girls’ track. Along the way, they broke 17 girls’ state track records, records no girl will likely ever get close to.
I have compassion for trans athletes’ struggles, and I understand their desire to compete in sports. Yet, we can’t pit one group against the other. We must be able to have honest, biology-based discussions on the matter without name-calling, fear of being cancelled, and without assuming evil motives of those with whom we disagree.
Too many today are afraid to state the obvious: that male-bodied athletes competing with biological women put females at an inherent and fundamentally unfair competitive disadvantage. We must not be forced to dismiss these most basic biological facts so as to bend the knee to a fashionable social revolution. We must not be afraid to state what is so clearly true: that this revolution will almost certainly destroy many of the gains of female athletes over the past 50 years.
Trans athletes’ desire to compete in sports must not come at the expense of women’s rights to compete, to be safe, and to win. When we ignore the undeniable biological advantage that males have over females, girls are harmed, harmed by the loss of medals and trophies, loss of records, loss of podium spots, and loss of college recruitment and scholarships, not to mention what, for some women, are quite lucrative sports-related careers. In what are referred to as “power sports,” girls have been and will be severely physically harmed. To use one of the favorite phrases of the left, where are the “safe spaces” for young girls and women? Where is the concern for their physical and mental health and the character development that comes from competition?
Physicians like Michelle Cretella have been stating the obvious, that men and women are profoundly genetically different, and that no hormone therapy or body-altering surgery can reverse these biological changes. “[M]en and women have—at a minimum—6,500 genetic differences between us. And this impacts every cell of our bodies—our organ systems, how diseases manifest, how we diagnose, and even treat in some cases.”
Fortunately, at least for now, most Americans see past the claims of today’s cultural revolutionaries and hold on to the science that dictates that biological men and women are profoundly physically different, even after hormone treatment. They can also see where women’s sports will be in the years to come, if girls and women’s sports are not protected. Polling last year in ten battle-ground states on this issue revealed that 75 percent of those polled were against biological males competing in female sports. Additionally, recent polling in Mississippi by Mason-Dixon demonstrated that 79 percent of Mississippi voters support legislation like Senator Hill’s. This includes the support of 87 percent of Republicans, 65 percent of Democrats, and 83 percent of independents.
So where does this leave Mississippi girls and women athletes? We cannot look to Washington to protect the civil rights of these young girls and women in Mississippi. Mississippi is one of only ten states that has no policy addressing the participation of biological male athletes in girls’ high school sports. Some of the track-running high school girls from Connecticut have filed suit in a case that is expected to make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Their case is strengthened by laws in any states that have been enacted to protect women’s sports.
As a woman and former athlete, I am grateful to Senator Hill for her leadership on this matter, despite the inevitable and vicious attacks that will come from the revolutionaries on the Left who do not desire to solve the problem together. Mississippians need to know that, if passed, The Fairness Act will protect the young girls and women in our state. We as a nation and a state have made too much progress for women’s rights over many decades to now watch it all be taken away.
Lesley Andress Davis the Executive Vice President of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.