Blog - Page 80 of 191 - Mississippi Center for Public Policy

Mississippi’s two largest cities – Jackson and Gulfport – are issuing orders for residents to stay at home in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

In Jackson, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba will make the announcement at a press conference later today. Hinds county has the most cases in the state at 90, which is about 10 percent of the total cases in Mississippi.

Mayor Billy Hewes is issuing a similar order for Gulfport. Hewes said this is necessary because too many people aren’t following limitations on gathering sizes.

“This selfishness is unfair to those who have been acting in good faith, and has now put our community at risk,” Hewes told the Sun Herald. “It is because of these activities that we are now forced to implement additional measures to protect the public. This is anything, but ‘business as usual.’”

Violators of the order in Gulfport can receive a $300 fine and/ or jail time.

Tupelo and Holly Springs have issued similar orders and on Tuesday Gov. Tate Reeves issued a lockdown order for residents in Lauderdale county because of a rapid rise in positive COVID-19 cases in the county, including an outbreak at a local nursing home.

What are stay at home orders?

Generally speaking, these orders close nonessential businesses and only allow residents to leave their home for specific, approved needs.

Under an order, you can still shop for groceries, pick up medications, pick up food from a restaurant, help family members in need, and exercise outdoors.

Essential businesses include hospitals, healthcare facilities, grocery stores, pharmacies, child-care centers, as well as a variety of sectors such as utilities, transportation, and finance and banking.

Alcohol delivery apps have seen a boom in sales in the states where they are legal since the outbreak of coronavirus. This doesn’t include Mississippi.

Drizly is an alcohol delivery app that lets you place an order for your favorite beer, wine, or liquor based on your location, and get it delivered to your front door. Drizly operates in 26 states plus the District of Columbia.

In the middle of March, their sales were up approximately 300 percent from the prior year. And that is mostly driven by new customers, who accounted for more than 40 percent of sales in March compared to the normal 15 percent.

Same story with Mininbar Delivery, another app that allows you to place an order to have alcohol delivered. They operate in 18 states. From March 11-16, there sales were up 131 percent from the prior week.

Helping to drive the increase in sales were larger orders that came with a price tag 20 percent higher than usual.

In light of the coronavirus pandemic, the Mississippi Department of Revenue has eased off a couple regulations to make it easier to purchase alcohol. Curbside pickup is available at liquor stores and you can order a bottle of wine with your to-go order from a restaurant.

Just not delivery.

For now, Mississippians cannot partake in the convenience of technology that allows their neighbors to order their drinks online or on their phone.

Gov. Tate Reeves announced today that he is issuing a ‘shelter-in-place’ order for Lauderdale county to slow the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.

This is the first locality that Reeves has issued a stay at home for after announcing that isolated orders would be coming soon. Lauderdale county has been identified by the Department of Health as a region that is at higher risk for transmission of COVID-19 after a rapid increase in positive cases in recent days. Reeves and other health officials noted an outbreak at a nursing home in the county.

The order remains in place for 14 days.

The guidelines for the order are as follows:

Individuals are to stay at home except for the limited allowances in the executive order.
When outside of their homes, people must follow social distancing guidelines by maintaining a 6-foot distance from others and avoid groups of 10 or more.
Evictions are suspended, though people are still required to pay any rent or make any mortgage payments.
All nonessential businesses are to stop all activities other than those necessary for minimum operations (e.g. payroll, health insurance, security) and enabling employees to work from home.
Social and other non-essential gatherings in groups of more than 10 people must be cancelled or rescheduled.
Restaurants and bars may only remain open for drive-thru, curbside, and/or delivery service.
People may leave their homes only to perform essential activities, such as caring for someone in the vulnerable population, getting food or necessary supplies, and working for an essential business.
Individual outdoor recreation is encouraged, but not group recreation or activities such as soccer or basketball games.

Prior to statewide action, the cities of Holly Springs and Tupelo had implemented local stay at home orders.

Last week, Reeves issued a statewide order stopping dine-in services at restaurants, unless there are 10 or less people present, and mandated social distance practices are being followed.

More counties are expected to receive similar orders in the coming days.

To implement lessons learned from the unprecedented emergency caused by the spread of the coronavirus, there are numerous long-term strategies we encourage Mississippi legislators and leaders to tackle to ensure a prosperous future for all.

These aren’t different than what Mississippi Center for Public Policy has long advocated. But as the current pandemic crystalized, we witnessed how government regulations often got in the way and stymied the help they are designed to provide. This was true in the past, it is true today, and will be true in the future.

Healthcare:

1. Repeal CON laws

Certificate of Need laws require would-be medical providers to prove — essentially to their competitors — that their community needs a new facility or service. And they are one of the reasons we see a shortage of hospital beds during a time of crisis. The Mississippi Department of Health is the central planner tasked with administering the state’s CON program. The Department’s CON Review program applies to “the establishment of new healthcare facilities, the offering of defined new institutional health services, and the acquisition of major medical equipment.” In some cases, new CONs have not been issued for decades because of government mandated prohibitions. Healthcare facilities shouldn’t have to ask the state for permission to open or expand a facility.

2. Expand scope of practice

Current regulations prevent nurse practitioners from practicing up to their full practice authority. Rather, they are required to enter into a “collaborative agreement” with a physician if an APRN wishes to open their own clinic. APRNs should be allowed to practice without this agreement.

Licensing and regulations:

5. Require a full regulatory audit of every agency to provide regulatory relief

Pending legislation would require a regulatory audit of four agencies in the state. That should be expanded to every agency in the state to provide a full picture of our regulatory burden. As we have seen, numerous regulations hinder access to healthcare and our ability to use technology for services, ranging from medical supply delivery via drones to alcohol delivery. Additionally, going forward, for every new regulation an agency adopts, two should be removed as we work to scale down the 117,000 regulations in the state.

Education:

10. Enable online learning in Mississippi

Mississippi has a very limited public virtual school, but no full-time options for students wishing to pursue that course, emergency or not. Yet, as the education future continues to develop, we will continue to see a demand for online learning. With online learning options, students literally have the world at their fingertips. Whether it’s a unique subject with hard-to-find instructors, a class they need more help with, or one that they are wishing to dive deeper into, the ability to use technology to transform education is very real. Mississippi should work to expand the current Virtual Public School to make it full-time and remove the prohibition on virtual charter schools to provide parents with more options.

As Mississippi battles the outbreak of coronavirus, a study that ranks states on their openness and access to healthcare places the state mid-pack nationally.

The Healthcare Openness and Access Project, authored by three scholars from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, ranked Mississippi 24th. The study measures the extent of control a state exercises over healthcare and the authors used 41 different indicators grouped in five categories.

The authors — Jared Rhoads, Dr. Darcy Bryan M.D., and Robert Graboyes — scored each state in each indicator on a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 being the best score. Then the scores for each indicator were averaged in their categories. Each state’s total score is an average of the five categories. Mississippi scored a 3.29, slightly above the national average of 3.27.

Rhoads said the new edition has some differences over the first index released in 2018, including moving some indicators from one category to another and reducing the number of categories from 10 to five.

“The result is more easily digestible now and what we’re hearing from readers and reviewers, it is a more intuitive way of organizing the data,” Rhoads said. “We wanted to give a general feel on how restrictive a state is versus how much it can liberate people to do what they think is best.”

In the professional regulation category, Mississippi scored well (3.40, above the U.S. average of 3.14) for being part of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact (29 states participate), fewer optician licensing requirements and broad scope of practice for behavioral health providers and midwives. It scored poorly on scope of practice for dental hygienists and overly restrictive licensing of certified registered nurse anesthetists.

In the institutional regulation category, Mississippi scored a 2.83, below the national average of 2.96. This category measures how much control state regulators impose over the business operations of healthcare institutions such as hospitals and pharmacies.

The state’s certificate of need program has more restrictions than most, receiving a score of 2. The state’s hospital taxes (up to $2 per patient bed per day) and raft of restrictions on compounding pharmacies also drew low marks from the study authors.

Mississippi law requires CON approval for all projects that increase the bed complement or a capital expenditure of at least $2 million. CON approval is also required for major medical equipment purchases of more than $1.5 million and is not a replacement for existing equipment. Mississippi is one of 35 states that requires a certificate of need.

Rhoads said that Mississippi’s CON laws were one area that policymakers could make a big change to the state’s rating. He also said that even just chipping away at some of the restrictions (such as a law that passed a few sessions ago that didn’t require CON approval for capital expenses related to natural disasters) would be a positive way to impact the state’s healthcare access.

There were three bills filed that would’ve eliminated the CON program in this year’s legislative session, but all three died in committee without making it to the floor for a vote.

Mississippi also scored lower (2.83) than the national average (3.10) on patient regulation, which is defined as easier access by patients to certain types of drugs and other patient-oriented protections.

The state was penalized for not allowing oral contraceptives unless prescribed by a physician and a lack of a free speech in medicine law. The state received top marks for protecting good Samaritans and lower taxes on e-cigarettes.

In the payment regulation category, Mississippi received high marks for not having an individual mandate to require individuals buy health insurance, has fewer health savings account taxes, doesn’t restrict short-term, renewable health insurance plans, and allows drug manufacturer copay coupons. Mississippi received low marks for not allowing insurers in other states to issue policies in the state and its ban on reimportation of prescription drugs.

Mississippi also received high marks for not having a lot of regulations on direct primary care plans. These plans enable doctors to bill patients directly for services. This bypasses traditional health plans, where a third party pays most of the cost while the insured pays a smaller amount. The state also received high marks for reimbursing Medicaid providers at parity for remote monitoring.

A bill that would’ve kept these plans from being regulated as an insurance product by the state Department of Insurance died in the Senate without a floor vote.

Healthcare Openness and Access Project 2020: State rankings

Mississippi scored better than its neighbors overall. Louisiana had the next best overall score, ranked 30th. Alabama was ranked 35th, while Tennessee was slightly higher at 33rd. Arkansas was 40th.

New Jersey, Massachusetts and New York were the least free states overall, while Colorado, Arizona and Utah were the freest.

The HOAP index has been released earlier than planned. The 2020 edition of the HOAP was supposed to come out in June, but the authors pushed up its release considering the coronavirus pandemic.

This version is an early, non-peer reviewed version that was released early to help policymakers with information to remove healthcare restrictions to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic. A full, peer-reviewed version will be released later this year.

Social distancing is the common term used for what we are told to do these days. Stay at least six feet away from other people in public, avoid crowds of 10 or more, and, better yet, don’t leave the house unless necessary.

Once upon a time that was referred to as isolation. Today, it is simply a matter of doing things a little differently. Thanks to technology.

With Zoom, Google Hangout, Facebook Live, and others, socially distant businesses can conduct virtual staff meetings that use to take place in a conference room. Teachers can provide lessons with students being able to ask questions in real time. Church services are streamed online. Families can continue to communicate face-to-face, even if it’s just through a screen. And social gatherings are still occurring through virtual happy hours.

If you would like culture to go with that drink – which can be delivered to your house in most states, just not Mississippi – you can check out virtual tours of museums and national parks. Since movies and concerts are a no-go right now, numerous artists have been holding virtual concerts on social media, while “watch parties” allow you to synchronize movies with friends across town or across the world.

Excluding alcohol, most other products that you would purchase can be delivered to your front door. Thanks to entrepreneurs and apps that we don’t think twice about, you can have a meal from your favorite restaurant delivered while it’s dining facility is closed. You can have your grocery order delivered. Or at the least have your order that you placed on an app brought to your car as you wait safely inside.

And telemedicine, which has long been available, is becoming more common, and necessary. And thanks to easing of regulations, more accessible for those want or need to visit with a medical professional, but don’t want to leave their house.

Indeed, the common theme is technology and the government stepping aside and letting innovation happen. Because of this, we are able to proceed with a little normality in our lives for these crazy times.

Gov. Tate Reeves said Sunday that isolated shelter in place orders in Mississippi are imminent for communities in the state that have been hardest hit by the outbreak of coronavirus.

During a social media address, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs and Reeves both said a statewide lockdown was not sustainable, but isolating clusters is part of the state’s new offensive strategy against the spread of coronavirus. As of March 28, the state had 758 positive cases with Desoto and Hinds counties accounting for nearly 20 percent of the cases total.

“If we depend on shelter-in-place to be a solution ... you're going to be sorely disappointed,” Dobbs said.

Reeves has signed an executive order closing dine-in services at restaurants, unless they are following mandated social distancing guidelines and less than 10 people are present.

States across the country have issued varying degrees of lockdowns with a wide range of what is essential, and what you are allowed to leave your house for. The only neighboring state with such an order is Louisiana, which is one of the hardest hit states outside of the New York City metropolitan area and the west coast.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has followed a similar path to Reeves in leaving the decision up to local governments. And the largest counties in the state – including Dallas, Harris (Houston), Tarrant (Fort Worth), Bexar (San Antonio), and the city of Austin – have issued such lockdowns.

The cities of Tupelo and Holly Springs have issued stay at home orders.

The REAL ID deadline of October 1, 2020 has been delayed a year because of the spread of the coronavirus in the United States. Now, Americans won’t need to update their ID until October 1, 2021 to travel domestically or visit federal facilities.

The delay was announced on March 23 by President Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security.

“We are postponing the deadline for compliance with REAL ID requirement at a time when we are asking Americans to maintain social distancing,” Trump said.

Many DMVs nationwide, include those in Mississippi, are currently closed.

What is REAL ID?

Passed by Congress in 2005, the REAL ID Act enacted the 9/11 Commission's recommendation that the Federal Government “set standards for the issuance of sources of identification, such as driver's licenses.” The Act established minimum security standards for state-issued driver's licenses and identification cards and prohibits Federal agencies from accepting for official purposes licenses and identification cards from states that do not meet these standards. These purposes are:

Accessing Federal facilities
Boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft
Entering nuclear power plants

What happens when REAL ID enforcement begins?

Federal agencies, including DHS and TSA, may only accept state-issued driver’s licenses and identification cards as identification for purposes of accessing federal facilities - including TSA airport security checkpoints - if the license or card was issued by a REAL ID compliant state in accordance with the REAL ID security standards (meaning the license or card must include the REAL ID compliant star marking). Most EDLs do not contain the star marking and this is acceptable.

How do I know if my license is REAL ID compliant?

In Mississippi, the REAL ID card has a gold star on it.

In 1975, Kareem Abdul Jabbar made $450,000 as the highest-paid player in the NBA. In that year, the average player salary was $90,000.

The way the game of basketball was played then determined which competencies (i.e. skills) were of most value. At that time, it was the center position. In terms of income inequality, a popular measurement of labor statistics favored by French economists and a former candidate for president of the United States, the difference of player income was a multiple of 5x. In that same year, the US median household income was $13,779 and an unarmed security guard working NBA arenas was making $3.50 per hour on average, $7,280 annually. The income inequality measure between Jabbar and the average family was 33x.

Fast forward to 2020, and the highest-paid player in the NBA is Steph Curry, making $40 million. The game has changed; 3-point shooting is now perhaps the most valued competency. In 2020, the average player in the NBA makes $7.7 million, roughly the same multiple of income inequality at 5x. Stated another way, both NBA figures, the top, and average contracts, represent a 10.5 percent CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate), demonstrating how much American and global consumers value the NBA.

In 2020, the US median household income is $63,688 and the average pay of the NBA security guard is $13.91 per hour, $32,429 per year. While the income inequality measure between the guard and the family remained constant at 2x over 45 years, as did the inequality between the top salary and the average salary in the NBA, the income inequality between Curry and the average family increased to 628x.

What can explain such an increase?

If we were demonstrating this sort of income inequality in a profession outside of the NBA or using an entrepreneur as the example rather than Steph Curry, you can imagine the exasperated cries from many who are convinced capitalism is an unfair economic system, perhaps even evil. Many make the unreasoned leap that the existence of an economic disparity between the top and bottom proves the existence of exploitation or structural unfairness.

In reality, it turns out that such unequal distributions are quite common. It’s as if they are governed by a natural law. Well, they are. There is a recurring pattern in all facets of our life that demonstrates the extremely unequal distribution of creative production. It’s called Price’s Law.

Derek Price, a British physicist, made the discovery that governs organizational output. Essentially, a small handful of people are always responsible for a large majority of the value creation. Price’s Law explains how this inequality exists in everything. Whether musicians, artists, writers or athletes, a small minority of people produce a majority of the most valuable things. It’s why only five composers have produced roughly 50 percent of all of the classical music we listen to. There is a hierarchy of competence that exists in everything.

The Pareto Principle is another helpful way to understand that inputs and outputs are not equally distributed. The Italian economist, Vilfredo Paretoobserved that 80 percent of the wealth in his country was controlled by 20 percent of the population. As he discovered, the same was true in other countries. Nearly everywhere we look, a minority outscores the majority in wealth because a few people have mastered the competency of their realms. We can look again to sports to see this play out in teams and leagues.

Of the 25 million people who play golf in America, only a few hundred of them are able to have a competency level high enough to play on the PGA Tour each year. And within that elite group, the Pareto Principle and Price’s Law hold true. Brooks Koepka started 21 tournaments in 2019 and earned $9,684,006 in prize money. Rod Pampling also started 21 tournaments in 2019. He earned $102,127.

Does this suggest the rules of the game were unfair? Did Koepka cheat? No, the results were simply unequal.

Let’s look at the NHL, where Connor McDavid is the highest-paid player at $12,500,000. Anthony Richard is also a center in the NHL. He makes $688,333. McDavid scored 116 points (41 goals, 75 assists) in 2019; Richard did not score. Are Canadians up in arms over this?

What about the NFL? The Pittsburgh Steelers have Ben Roethlisberger and Paxton Lynch under contract as quarterbacks. Roethlisberger makes $36,042,682; Lynch makes $735,000. In 2018, Roethlisberger threw 34 TDs; Lynch threw two in 2017. In Seattle, Russell Wilson earns $31 million per year as the starting quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks. He threw 31 TDs last year. Cody Thompson is also a QB on the Seahawks roster. He makes $510,000 annually.

If we go across the pond to the English Premier League, will we find a more egalitarian system based on an equal distribution of compensation? The top goalkeeper in the EPL is David De Gea. The Spanish wizard has a record of 167 wins and 65 losses, including an astonishing 107 clean sheets. De Gea is paid £19,500,000 per year. The lowest-paid goalkeeper in the EPL is Pontus Dahlberg at £156,000. Dahlberg is yet to make an appearance in an EPL match.

Returning to the NBA, what about a favorite of social justice advocates, LeBron James? In the 2019 season, James averaged 25.5 points and 10.5 assists and earned $31 million in salary, which was roughly 30 percent of the Lakers’ cap space. Talen Horton-Tucker is also a player on the Lakers. He earned $898,310, despite averaging zero points and one assist per game.

In other words, the NBA has become such a valuable form of entertainment around the globe that a benchwarmer today is making what Kareem Abdul Jabbar made in 1975 (in inflation adjusted dollars). And that’s a good thing. While we focus on how much Steph Curry makes at the compensation ceiling, what we need to recognize is how much players are making on the compensation floor. The difference in compensation is not a result of bias; it’s a result of a meritocracy that rewards value creation. No NBA players are being exploited.

What these salaries reveal is the liberating nature of free enterprise. It works beyond sports, too.

Free enterprise gives opportunity to the creative and encourages productive actions. There is no other way to explain the substantial decline in extreme poverty in the world over the past 40 years. In the 1980s, 40 percent of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today, 8.6 percent do. Instead of focusing on the income gap, we should keep raising the floor.

Yes, the rich are getting richer. But who says they are doing so at the expense of the poor? Well, lots of people. The list includes French socialists, economics professors at Harvard, Project 1619 contributors at The New York Times, Bernie Sanders, CNN commentators, even some professional athletes.

We don’t know if these people believe attacks on the rich will lead to a more prosperous society, but when citizens start to believe this popular fiction, it leads to a strong resentment against the most creative producers in our society. It feeds the belief that these producers obtained their wealth by stealing it from others.

This can lead to destructive public policies, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax. Rather than focusing on attempting to narrow the gap between rich and poor, we should focus on expanding economic growth.

That’s what the professional sports leagues have done over the past four decades, and there are many more millionaires as a result.

This appeared in FEE on March 27, 2020.