Charles and Cheryl Penson shuffled up the steps of a bus in Tupelo at 4 a.m. on Tuesday to begin a long day’s trek to the state Capitol. 

The reason the Pensons, both of whom are ministers, traveled over three hours to the seat of Mississippi’s government is they know several people in rural northeast Mississippi, including one of their own daughters, who could benefit from expanded Medicaid coverage. 

Their daughter is a businesswoman and a single mother, they said, who works hard at her job, but she could use assistance with health care costs, especially to help her young child who has experienced health issues recently. 

“I am here because I want to see what is morally right done for the people of Mississippi,” Cheryl Penson said as her husband nodded in agreement. “If you have a heart, you have to have a heart for all people.”

The husband and wife weren’t alone. 

The two joined hundreds of doctors, clergy and other Mississippians from over 35 communities across the Magnolia State who shared stories of their own at a “Full Expansion Day” rally at the Capitol. They urged legislators to expand Medicaid coverage under the federal Affordable Care Act.

Christine Dunaway of Jackson told Mississippi Today she attended the rally because she spent 20 years as an advocate for people living with disabilities as the former director of Living Independence for Everyone of Mississippi.

“I worked with so many people over the years who would have benefited from Medicaid expansion — working poor people trying to go to work, who didn’t have insurance, couldn’t afford it, didn’t have access to it,” Dunaway said. ” … I was born missing three limbs. My parents would have been considered middle class, but they couldn’t afford prosthetics back then.”

As personal stories meshed with religious sermons the concrete steps on the front of the Capitol became like church pews when faith leaders from different religions and Christian denominations pleaded with legislators to give poor Mississippians access to health insurance.  

“As a state that is proud of its pro-life stance, it is only fitting that this Legislature now leans into the opportunity to make it possible for all Mississippians across this state to have full access to health care,” said the Rev. Reginald Buckley, pastor of Jackson’s Cade Chapel M.B. Church.

But just hours earlier, some of those same ministers and participants appeared to take James’ epistle of “faith without works is dead” to heart by beginning their day of advocacy in actual pews at the historic sanctuary of Mt. Helm Baptist Church in downtown Jackson. 

The morning service in one of the oldest Black churches in Jackson started with songs, prayers, scripture centered on civilly pressuring the 174 state lawmakers in Jackson to pass expansion.

“We thank you for collective power, but surely Lord we know that apart from your power, we can do nothing,” the Rev. Dr. C.J. Rhodes, the pastor of the church, prayed. “For it’s not by power nor by might, but by your spirit, says the Lord of hosts. So breathe upon us, give us your spirit, oh God, and give us your blessings so that we can do what seems to be impossible even today.” 

The prayers of accomplishing the insurmountable, though, quickly turned into advocacy chants, the new sanctuary became the 2nd floor rotunda of the Capitol and the hymns morphed into telephone calls that flooded the voicemails of holdout legislators. 

After the morning of worship, the interdenominational group assembled signs, slapped supportive stickers on their shirts, reviewed phone-banking scripts and tweaked message to their local legislators over expansion.   

“Jesus is the reason that I’m here,” said Brittany Caldwell, a coordinator of community engagement for Great Rivers Fellowship and Natchez resident, said. “To be a disciple of Jesus is to be a disciple in both word and action.”

The rally comes in the middle of House and Senate leaders attempting to negotiate a compromise on Medicaid expansion legislation after the two chambers passed drastically different plans earlier in the session. 

The House’s expansion plan aims to expand health care coverage to upwards of 200,000 Mississippians, and accept $1 billion a year in federal money to cover it, as most other states have done.

The Senate, on the other hand, wants a more restrictive program, to expand Medicaid to cover around 40,000 people, turn down the federal money, and require proof that recipients are working at least 30 hours a week. 

Those at the rally made clear they support “Full expansion now,” which they frequently chanted, and not the Senate proposal, which its drafters have referred to as “expansion lite.”

Representatives of the two chambers, called conferees, have not yet met in public to haggle over a final expansion plan, and as of Tuesday evening, the Legislature’s website did not list a scheduled meeting to take place later this week. 

A natural compromise is for the two chambers to agree on a  “MarketPlus Hybrid Plan,” which health policy experts with the Center for Mississippi Health Policy and the Hilltop Institute at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County estimate could save the state money in the long-term. 

The hybrid plan would offer expanded Medicaid coverage through the state’s managed care program for those making under 100% of the federal poverty level. For those making 100% to 138% (up to $20,000 for an individual) of poverty level, the plan would use federal money to provide assistance for them to buy private insurance plans through Mississippi’s marketplace exchange.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has privately vowed to lawmakers that he will veto any Medicaid expansion bill that reaches his desk, putting the future of expansion in the hands of the Legislature, who can override the veto with a two-thirds vote in both chambers.

House Speaker Jason White, a Republican from West, previously told Mississippi Today in an interview that he believes he can hold a bipartisan group of more than 90 House members, a veto-proof majority, together in support of a compromise expansion package. 

But the coalition of support in the 52-member Senate is more fragile. The Capitol’s upper chamber only passed its austere expansion plan by 36 votes, one vote shy of the two-thirds threshold needed to override a governor’s veto. 

One reason the expansion debate has caused some Republican senators to oppose the proposal is it’s become mired in partisan politics because of the governor’s messaging and hardline conservatives derisively labeling it “Obamacare expansion.” 

But clergy at the Capitol on Tuesday said the issue rises above partisan politics. 

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Parker, senior pastor at Southside Baptist Church in Jackson, is a self-described “Southern Baptist Republican,” who believes in the Gospel of Matthew, where it says “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” should move Christians to support expansion.

Parker recounted a conversation he had with a friend shortly before the rally who warned him he would be branded as a liberal if he spoke too forcefully in favor of the Medicaid expansion. 

“I looked at him, and I finally said this: ‘Are we reading the same Bible?’” Parker said. “I would challenge every church in the state of Mississippi, regardless of your denominational tag, to take a long, hard look at the book of Matthew.” 

Mississippi Today reporters Bobby Harrision and Geoff Pender contributed to this report.

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