Often in politics, it is easier to define a problem than it is to solve it.
Remember Barack Obama’s eloquent speech about the need to unite America beyond red states Vs blue states? When Obama left office, America was more politically polarized than before.
Who could forget Al Gore’s theatrics as he talked about the need to save the planet? I doubt a Gore-run administration would be able to control the country’s borders, let alone control global sea levels or the climate.
Remember how during last year’s gubernatorial race here in Mississippi, Brandon Presley, the Democrat candidate, waxed lyrically about the fate of rural hospitals? Hosing federal funds around is unlikely to change the fact that hospitals that are underused will remain underused.
Politicians can certainly make problems worse. Obama, I would argue, exacerbated America’s divisions. Gore & co have advocated for an energy policy that does nothing to control the climate, but has made people poorer. Subsidising an underused health service is unlikely to make it magically sustainable.
Occasionally, however, politicians have it in their gift to do something that really would improve things.
In a report we published this week, we show that there is a solution to Mississippi’s healthcare crisis staring us in the face: our leaders could abolish the anticompetitive laws that intentionally limit the number of healthcare providers in our state. This would improve access to healthcare and lower costs for everyone.
For years, if a healthcare provider wants to offer new services or expand existing services in 19 key areas of health care, they are required by law to get a permit. These Soviet-style permits, known as Certificates of Need (CON), are also required for a provider wanting to spend more than $1.5 million on new medical equipment, relocate services from one part of the state to another, or change ownership.
Unlike other sensible licensing requirements, CON requirements are not designed primarily to assess a provider’s qualifications, safety record, or fitness. They are about central planning to decide if each new applicant’s services are “needed” by the community. I believe that it should be up to patients and practioners to decide what is needed, not government bureaucrats.
CON laws in Mississippi limit the provision of long term care, despite demographic change that has seen the number of elderly people needing care increase dramatically. Ambulatory services, key diagnostic services, psychiatric services and many other services are all limited by CON laws.
If the case for change is so overwhelming, why has it not already been done? In any market, when there are restrictions imposed to keep out the competition, there will be various vested interests that lobby for their retention. So, too, with CON laws.
Defenders of CON restrictions suggest that CON repeal would be risky and dangerous. They like to imply that any reform would reduce access and quality would suffer.
Such concerns are unfounded. Over 100 million Americans—nearly a third of the population—live in states without CON laws in health care. Four in ten Americans live in states with limited CON regimes that apply to only one or two services, such as ambulance services or nursing homes.
If our lawmakers are serious about improving healthcare in Mississippi, I hope they read our report, which sets out not only what needs to be done, but provides a roadmap explaining how to do it.
High flying rhetoric won’t improve our state. Getting down to work and removing CON laws will.
Following Hamas’ terror attack on Israel, tens of thousands took to the streets. They marched in Manhattan and Chicago, as well as London and Paris. Rallies were held on the campuses of colleges across America.
Were the protesters lamenting the death of Israeli civilians? Not at all. Were they there to demand the release of young children taken hostage by Hamas? I missed that bit.
Instead, in the wake of a pogrom that saw the murder of 1,400 Jews, tens of thousands of Americans marched in support of their killers. The protesters literally chanted for the destruction of the state of Israel.
How can it possibly be that the great grandchildren of the generation of Americans that liberated Dachau could think this way?
For a generation, ‘woke’ ideas have been left to fester on college campuses. Over the past few weeks, we have started to see the real world consequences.
If we are to put this right, we first need to understand what has gone wrong. Looking at the protesters on social media, I was struck by the farcical contradictions.
Feminists were out there in support of an Islamist ideology that denies women rights. Self-styled democrats sided with those seeking to establish a theocracy. On social media, I saw a group calling themselves “Queers for Palestine”, holding aloft a rainbow motif. How long do you imagine they would survive in Gaza?
This confusion by the pro-Hamas protesters, which would be comical if it were not so grim, points to the root cause of the problem; for millions of young Americans, a creed of cultural relativism has been allowed to establish itself as a secular belief system.
If all cultures were of equal worth, then every culture would be as capable of producing science, innovation and political liberty – not to mention a US Constitution. Most cultures are not.
The trouble is that if you refuse to accept that some ways of life are better than others, you have no means of measuring what is good. In your twisted belief system, the head hackers of Hamas are no different from the Golani reservists prepared to take great personal risks to minimize civilian casualties.
Cultural relativism begins by applying double standards. It rapidly descends to favoring the non-Western over the Western.
Taught to believe in decolonizing the curriculum at school and university, perhaps you start to see Hamas terrorists as noble savages, battling to decolonize Palestine from the wicked West. Often unconsciously, we have raised an entire generation to see the human condition as Rousseau perceived it, rather than though the hard-headed realism of Hobbes. No wonder some then think like latter-day Jacobins. No surprise that the BBC, a once credible organization, refuses to call Hamas terrorists.
Ambivalence about the Western way of life slips into open animus.
“But what do you mean by Western way of life?” some will ask. “What do people living in the southern US or in Scandinavia possibly have in common with those in the Negev? There is no single Western culture”.
Culture is indeed complex, like the branches of a very tall tree. But within the tree of culture there is a definable trunk that one might call Judeo-Christian culture, from which extend a multiplicity of off shoots.
Culture, as with the branches of a tree, can sometimes be grafted, some cultures fused onto another. You even get what arborists call ‘inosculation’, when branches that had separated fuse back together as one again.
But as any arborist also knows, not every kind of graft will work. Not every kind of culture can be fused with every other. Some are incompatible. Nor can every way of life coexist alongside every other. Those Western feminists marching in support of Hamas seem not to have understood this. Their children and their grandchildren will.
Nor, perhaps, have Western progressives understood that Western culture, whether we are conscious of it or not, is a product of a distinctive set of ideas, both secular and ecclesiastical. I doubt many atheists would appreciate me pointing it out, but even their humanist belief system is a product of something uncontestably Judeo Christian. (Try living under Hamas as a secular humanist and see how long you last).
None of this really matters when everyone around us shares the same underlying Western cultural assumptions. To a degree that might surprise both evangelicals and atheists, they fundamentally do share a common set of assumptions. The trouble is that there is a growing body of those living in the West that don’t. There are an increasing number of people in the US, Britain and Europe – not to mention the Middle East - whose world view is shaped by the ideology of political Islamism, and Islamism’s principle proponent, Sayyid Qtub.
When political Islamism comes into conflict with Western ways, as it has with increasing frequency since the Salman Rushdie affair in the 1980s, the cultural relativists living in the West have no idea where to draw the line. Indeed, they do not even appreciate that there is a line to be drawn.
“But what about the sins of Western culture?” some will counter. “Weren’t Western countries once at the center of the slave trade? Didn’t women and minorities have to endure unequal treatment within living memory?”
Almost every contemporary non-Western culture around the world today falls short of the standards set by campus progressives. Only in the West are individual rights respected, often at times imperfectly (as the campus puritans are quick to point out). Anyone who does not know that may not know much about life outside America.
That the West today is a far more pleasant place for minorities than it was in the past is not evidence of Western guilt. It shows that cultural progress is possible. The way we used to live is not as good as it is today. Not every way of living is of equal worth. That cultural progress is possible is proof that cultural relativism is a nonsense, and that some ways of life are worth fighting in preference to others.
Here in the southern US, the Mississippi Center for Public Policy tries to teach a cohort of young Americans some of the underlying ideas and principles that underpin Western liberty. Through our Leadership Academy, we introduce them to the history of Western thought – Hobbes, Locke and the Founding Fathers. We discuss with them the morality of the free market, and American exceptionalism.
Students graduating from our program will, I hope, see the world very differently from the day they started. The insights and lessons we teach will, I hope, remain with them for life.
When we launched the Academy two years ago, I saw it was important, but no more than a nice-to-have. After the events of the past few weeks, I see it as perhaps the most important thing a think tank in America could be doing.
The scenes we saw from southern Israel were gruesome. Two hundred and fifty young people at a music festival murdered. Elderly people waiting at a bus stop gunned down. Women and children abducted at gun point, and carried off to a grislycaptivity at the hands of Hamas.
Hamas’ attack on Israel could not conceivably serve any conventional military purpose. The aim of the attack was to kill and abduct as many civilians as possible. Indeed, theIsraelis suspect that the ‘Tribe of Nova’ music festival, apparently advertised all over social media, was specifically targeted by Hamas.
How should the United States respond?
First, Americans should remember why they support Israel. A tiny slither of land less than a fifth the size of Louisiana, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. In Israel, as in America, government comes from the people and by the people.
The only example of an open society in the Middle East, Israel is a social and economic success story. So much so, in fact, Israel’s very existence is a rebuke to the theocrats and thugocracies that surround her. This is why those theocrats and thugs seek her destruction.
It is easy to support Israel today when the images of the latest atrocities are fresh in our minds. But we need to brace ourselves to give Israel moral support in the bleak months ahead.
Even now, as Hamas paraded their helpless hostages in Gaza, there are no shortage of Western ‘intellectuals’ quick to come out in support of such savagery. Those anti-Israel voices will only grow louder as Israel undertakes the grim task ofneutralising further threats from Hamas in Gaza, and possibly even Hezbollah in the north.
One immediate consequence of Hamas’ attack has been to put Israel’s peace talks with Saudi Arabia on hold. Indeed, that might have been Iran’s intention in helping encourage and orchestrate the terror attacks, as some reports now suggest seems likely.
The atrocities in Israel should be a wakeup call for America’s foreign policy establishment. For two decades, Western countries have tried various initiatives to reach out to Iran. Doing so, we were told, would encourage ‘the moderates’ in Tehran. Handing over billions of dollars, according to many ‘experts’, would bring about a rapprochement.
Today, there is not much sign of any moderation by Iran. Nor have we seen a softening of Tehran’s position. What we have seen are a lot of dead young Israelis at a music festival, killed by Iranian-backed terrorists.
We must no longer pretend that we can deal with Iran as a normal nation.
For as long as I can remember, all the sensible foreign policy people in Washington and London talked about the need for a two state solution in the Middle East. Today we can see what Hamas are really like, and I wonder if there is anything sensible about giving such people sovereignty over anyone.
My greatest concern in the aftermath of these attacks in not with the Middle East, but with America.
As news of the atrocities was being reported, several mainstream broadcasters insisted on calling the perpetrators ‘militants’, rather than ‘terrorists’. In several cities in Europe and north America, we saw pro-Palestinian protesterschanting for the destruction of Israel.
At Harvard, 31 student groups, including the Muslim Student Association and Students for Health Equity and Justice in Palestine, issued a statement blaming Israel for what happened.
Maybe years of ‘woke’ teaching and recruitment at elite institutions comes with consequences?
After decades of promoting cultural relativism, the absurd idea that all cultures are of equal worth, we end up with an intellectual ‘elite’ unable to differentiate between an imperfect democracy, Israel, and a gang of savages, Hamas.
It is this that really ought to concern us. Would you be happy having people that think this way running the State Department in 30 years time?
Israel, like America, has the munitions and the manpower she needs to defend herself against those intent on undermining her way of life. For now. What we must fear instead is the moral disarmament of the West that has been happening one campus at a time.
Job hiring website, Indeed.com, has published data showing the Jackson metro area to be one of the best performing metro areas in America for new job postings.
According to Indeed’s job posting index, the Jackson metro area jobs postings are 54 percent higher now than they were in February 2020. Of all the metro areas in America, only Phoenix in Arizona and Spokane in Washington performed better than Mississippi’s state capital.
“Indeed’s data on jobs growth shows Jackson Mississippi is outperforming most other American cities when it comes to jobs posting growth since February 2020” explained Douglas Carswell of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
“The Jackson metro area has since that time outperformed cities such as Raleigh, North Carolina and even Dallas, Texas in terms of new jobs postings on Indeed”.
“Clearly this is only one set of data from one job hiring firm, but it is indicative of a broader trend we are now seeing in Mississippi”, Carswell continued. “This state is on the up”.
“Since Governor Tate Reeves signed into law a universal occupational licensing law, and with all that inward investment flowing into the state, the jobs market has picked up. Mississippi is now part of a wider southern economic success story”.
Twenty two years ago America was hit by a horrific terrorist attack. Like many readers, I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard that a plane had struck the Twin Towers.
An entire generation of young Americans has, of course, been born since that terrible day, with no recollection of an event many of us can never forget.
That makes it vital that we take a moment this year to think about September 11th 2001. We should remember the victims who headed out to work that day expecting to see their loved ones again. We should remember the heroes, too, especially those on flight 93, whose selfless actions saved many lives.
Let us not forget, either, why it was that a group of savages in a distant land should want to commit such an atrocity.
Over the past two decades a myth has emerged that the attack on the Twin Towers was somehow pay back against American interference in Iraq or Afghanistan. This idea, surprisingly widespread in Europe, puts the cart before the horse.
America invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in response to the attack on the Twin Towers. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan could not possibly have been a cause of it.
Islamist terrorists first attempted to blow up the Twin Towers way back in 1993. At that time, America’s direct involvement in the Middle East had been largely limited to the liberation of Kuwait – at the invitation of Arab leaders. Indeed, America had had precious little direct military involvement in the region since Ronald Reagan pulled US peacekeepers out of Lebanon in 1983.
No, the real reason Islamist terrorists attacked America 22 years ago is because America exists.
Why does the existence of America offend the Islamists? It’s not about Israel or George Bush. America is resented by Islamists because the United States represents not only a better way of life, but the best way of life yet lived by any portion of humankind.
Cultural relativism, an often well-meaning belief that every way of life is equally valid, is so pervasive among America’s elite, I fear it blinds them to the truth; there is no better place to live your life than in the United States of America.
The United States is founded on a revolutionary set of principles that emerged out of the European Enlightenment – that each of us is created equal and in possession of natural rights. The US is governed not by theocrats, but by a Constitution written by men.
Even more galling for the Islamist fundamentalist, this American system works.
Think of the southern US border today. Thousands of people from every part of the planet are clamouring to get into the United States. They are not trying to make their way into Yemen or Syria.
If, like the Islamists, you believe that the path of a perfect society is to order it in accordance with fundamentalist Islamist principles, the evidence from Iran, Sudan or Libya is not entirely encouraging for your cause.
One of the first acts of America’s first President, George Washington, was to state explicitly that it was not enough to merely tolerate religious differences. Henceforth in this country, he wrote to the Jewish congregation in Newport in 1790, people of every faith should “enjoy the exercise of their inherent natural rights”.
That idea of religious freedom must be hard to take if you believe that you alone have an understanding of the divine.
These are the principles on which America was founded, and they are a better way of organizing a society than every other way ever attempted.
Perhaps most important, we should remember the brave Americans who stepped forward after the attack on the Twin Towers to protect the American way of life. Thanks to many thousands of brave acts – some big, some small, some documented, others untold – they have helped keep this country, and the West, largely safe ever since. Thank you.
What was the most significant thing Donald Trump did as President?
Love him or loathe him, Trump’s Supreme Court appointments look like they might have been the most consequential thing he did in office. Of the nine Justices on the Court, one third of them - Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett - are Trump appointees.
Trump’s trio have decisively changed the balance of opinion on the Court – and the implications of this only seem to grow.
The Supreme Court recently ruled that ‘affirmative action’ cannot be used as part of a university admissions process. Or to be more precise, it ruled that the system used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, does not comply with the principles of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment or the protections of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
For decades, universities have used race-based preferencing to rig their selection systems in favor of some racial groups, and at the expense of others. Often this has meant universities admitting more African American students, with lower grades, than they otherwise might have, and at the expense of Asian American students with higher grades.
In the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, “all forms of discrimination based on race — including so-called affirmative action — are prohibited under the Constitution”.
Progressive academics, hooked on ‘woke’ ideology as an addict is to meth, may deviously look to circumvent the ruling. Regardless, an important victory has been won by those who believe that the way to end racial discrimination is to stop racially discriminating.
So-called ‘affirmative action’ can now be challenged in the knowledge that the Supreme Court will likely rule against it should ‘woke’ bureaucrats be daft enough to let things go far. Let the litigation begin …. Perhaps we will now see a flurry of cases aimed at overturning ‘affirmative action’ when it comes to awarding public procurement contracts and practices within local government?
A day later, the Supreme Court made another momentous decision, when it ruled that President Biden’s plan to cancel over $400 billion of student loan debt was also contrary to the Constitution. A few hours after that, the Court ruled that a Christian website designer could not be compelled by state law in Colorado to articulate views that they did not themselves endorse.
A year before, the Court famously overturned Roe Vs Wade, ruling that decisions about abortion should be left to each individual state.
Maybe the Court’s most consequential ruling of all is one that has received the least attention. Last summer, the Court ruled that the Environment Protection Agency did not have the power it presumed to have. For the first time since the New Deal, the legal assumptions that have allowed for the aggrandizement of the administrative state are being challenged.
Responding to the Court’s recent ruling on affirmative action, President Biden declared that ‘this is not a normal court’. He’s right.
The norm, since the Warren court of the 1950s, has been to have the Supreme Court adjudicate on the basis of what the judges would like the law to say. Today, we have a Supreme Court ruling on the basis of what the law actually says. So accustomed have we become after decades of judicial activism that might not feel normal, but it is what the Founders intended.
Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan attempted to change things, selecting the brilliant Robert Bork to sit on the Court - only to have him rejected by Congress after a bruising battle. Something similar almost happened when Bush the elder appointed Clarence Thomas. He had to endure a smear campaign similar to what Brett Kavanaugh experienced more recently.
Some characterize the change in the composition of the Court as a tilt towards conservatism after years of leaning liberal. I am not sure that is quite right. Recent Court rulings on election law in Alabama and Louisiana certainly weren’t welcomed by many conservatives in those states.
What the Supreme Court seems to have done is move away from judicial activism in favor of originalism – the idea that they should stay true to the original intentions of the Founders when they drafted the Constitution.
Perhaps that’s one bias the Supreme Court should always have.
A key free-market principle is that economic freedom and consumer choice should be the basis for economic policies. Mississippi’s House Bill 833 is a bill that goes against these principles by creating a regulation that vehicle manufacturers must use a third-party franchise dealership to sell their cars. The bill recently passed the House and has been referred to the Senate finance committee.
In the wake of innovative technologies, innovative business models have emerged with them. The car industry is no exception. As electric cars are being developed, manufacturers have sought alternative ways to lower costs for consumers. One way that manufacturers accomplish this is by selling their vehicles directly to consumers instead of using the traditional dealership franchise model.
Why has the government gotten involved in auto dealerships in the first place? To better understand the root of this debate, it is helpful to consider the historical background. Instead of selling their cars directly to consumers, manufacturers have historically sold their cars through third-party franchises.
By the middle of the 20th century, the car market had consolidated to only a few manufacturers. Since there were only a few manufacturers, dealers were concerned that manufacturers would leverage their market dominance as a way to force dealers into one-sided franchise contracts. To push back against this, the dealers successfully lobbied for franchise laws that set minimum standards for the contracts between manufacturers and dealers.
Under current law, a car manufacturing subsidiary is not prohibited from obtaining a license to operate a dealership. Some have argued that this violates the franchise laws that govern agreements between manufacturers and franchisees.
However, the original purpose of the franchise laws was to regulate contracts between manufacturers and actual third-party dealers, not to require that all car manufacturers use the franchise model. Suppose a company does not use the franchise model. In that case, it should not be pushed out of the market by laws that are intended for franchise contract regulation.
Should the government decide that because cars have historically been purchased through franchises, that this must be the case indefinitely? Ultimately, the issue boils down to consumer choice. If a consumer decides that they do not want to have a dealership involved in their vehicle purchase, government policy should not force them to.
Some consumers may prefer the dealer franchise experience over purchasing a vehicle straight from the manufacturer. Yet, it is anti-free market policy for the government to force all citizens everywhere in the state to only purchase a vehicle exclusively from franchisees.
Comparable to the issue of mandating car dealership franchises is a consideration of other goods in the market. For instance, imagine if Mississippi required all restaurant chains to operate as a franchise. Chick-Fil-A, Subway, and other franchise restaurants chains would still be options on the table for consumers. Meanwhile, Mississippians could not enjoy a meal from Cracker Barrel, Chipotle, Panda Express, or other non-franchise restaurants.
Thankfully government overreach has not gone that far yet, but House Bill 833 would impose such a rule on car choices. Mississippians could take the car by the drive-through at as many non-franchise restaurants as they pleased. But buy that new electric car from a non-franchise dealer? No indeed not.
Personal preferences and choices are the lifeblood of a free economy, not a system where individuals are forced to comply with heavy-handed government regulations. House Bill 833 is bad for consumers, the free market, and the state of Mississippi. Free people should have the ability to make free choices without a nanny state forcing them to buy certain items in their state through a third party.
The Freedom of Speech is what made America. It is what has made America. Without it, there would be no discourse in our democratic republic, and there would most likely be nothing but a spastic majority rule.
Whether it be a media personality, a private citizen, a college professor, or a public official, no one seems to be safe from cancel culture nowadays. Cancel culture, many say, is simply more free speech holding others accountable, and while I see where they might be coming from, it's to the extent that many go with it that truly bothers me – silencing those you disagree with to the point of ruining lives and exiling them.
If one is offended by something's unjustness or immorality, then they may boycott it or do whatever they want with their freedom of speech to call out whatever it is they're calling out. But, if people feel afraid to express their views because of cancel culture, if they stop their ideas before they’ve even taken form, that’s a chilling effect. People from both sides of the aisle are guilty of it, but over the past decade or so, the Left has increasingly taken advantage of this form of bullying.
One of the most recent examples here in Mississippi was at the collegiate-level when the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) chapter at Ole Miss took part in Young America’s Foundation’s Freedom Week, an event held on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The students constructed a mock wall and spray-painted it with “microaggressions,” “safe spaces,” and other terms leftists use in their attempts to squelch free speech. There, they were questioned by university administrators who expressed disapproval.
A month later, the chapter received a letter from the university’s Office of Conflict Resolution and Student Conduct notifying them of a report alleging that the organization had held an “unregistered event." Ole Miss YAF’s Berlin Wall event did not meet any of the criteria to require registration, but out of an abundance of caution, the group did submit a registration form four business days before the event, but they never received a response and went ahead with the event.
The organization was informed that they would be subjected to a judicial review process to determine whether they had violated any university policies and whether any punishments should be imposed, or, they could agree to an administrative punishment which would prevent them from registering any events for thirty days.
The Mississippi Justice Institute then stepped in with a letter to Ole Miss stating that the chapter, "considers the free speech rights of its members to be of the utmost importance to the members themselves, to the mission of Ole Miss YAF, and to society at large, and is therefore prepared to take further action to protect the rights of its members."
After back-and-forth discussions, Ole Miss terminated the unfounded administrative proceedings against the chapter.
What this all really boiled down to was there was one party who did not like what the other was saying and they tried to shut them down for no justifiable rhyme or reason. What happened at Ole Miss though, was not a government mandate, but a cultural one. The First Amendment itself isn't under attack with any laws or mandates, but its spirit is. This is not a problem that can be solved in court room but at town hall meetings and public squares. This is a cultural issue that only We, the People, can address. When your surrounding culture is so toxic and so hostile to differing opinions that they would rather completely cancel you than debate you, your democracy is at stake.
In recent years there has been an increasing call to expand Medicaid in the state of Mississippi, with assurances of “free money” and a boost to the state economy. Despite such rosy pictures, recent events have demonstrated the danger of inviting an increasingly hostile federal government with open arms.
In November 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a rule that required staff members of the facilities that participate in Medicaid or Medicare to be vaccinated, with limited religious and medical exceptions. While the mandate was challenged in court, an opinion issued on January 13th, 2022, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the facilities must comply with the CMS vaccine order to continue to receive CMS funding, with the reasoning that Congress had already granted CMS such authority.
The legal doctrines surrounding the challenge to the mandate are outside the scope of this article. But ultimately, the bottom line is that the Mississippi nurses and doctors who have served on the front lines of the pandemic for months will now be subject to the whims of Washington. Instead of making personal choices regarding vaccinations, those in the hospital system have had the decision made for them by federal bureaucrats.
Granted, most of those in the hospital system are already vaccinated. However, the hospital system across the nation is already seeing an exodus of staff as they grapple with long hours, hazardous conditions, and demanding workloads. This has led to a staffing shortage and higher demand. Many hospitals have to pay exponentially higher pay rates just to keep staff in place. This has pushed many hospitals in the nation to the brink of bankruptcy.
The recent requirement from CMS adds to the existing strains. Right from the outset, hospital staff that have made the personal decision to remain unvaccinated will now be subject to discipline and/or termination. But furthermore, even the staff that might already be vaccinated now have clear signals from the federal government that the hospital staff could be subjected to increasingly draconian measures. Instead of waiting for the next round of edicts that might put them on the blacklist, many within the hospital system may simply choose to head for the exit and look for other opportunities. After all, the tyranny that comes for your neighbor today can just as easily come for you tomorrow.
This state of affairs hinges back to the fundamental question before Mississippi when it considers Medicaid expansion. Of course, there are strong arguments against Medicaid expansion from fiscal and policy angles, and such arguments absolutely stand true. But the recent actions CMS shed light on another angle of the issue.
In the case of vaccine mandates for hospital employees, the state is forced to comply against her will. This particular mandate applied to expansion and non-expansion states. However, can the state really complain if it further invites this same federal agency with open arms through Medicaid expansion and freedoms are infringed on some other way at a later date? States that have expanded Medicaid have seen far more federal control than non-expansion states. And naturally, one shouldn’t be surprised. The “power of the purse” is very real, and the more the federal government funds something, the more it controls it No matter the lofty promises of Medicaid expansion, no one can calculate the value of the freedom of Mississippians into a spreadsheet. Even if the federal government made Medicaid expansion seem more enticing, the question of tradeoffs must be asked. At the end of the day, is there any price tag that would justify Mississippi handing over even more control to a federal government on a trajectory that is all but disconnected from the interests of the people of the state? If the price of “free money” from Washington is a reduction in freedom itself, then that is a price tag far too high to pay.