Lauren Jones, co-founder and executive director of Mom.ME., talks about mental health services in Mississippi, and she shares her personal story of dealing with postpartum mental health issues.
Mississippi health news you can’t get anywhere else.
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We’re nearing Christmas and Ole Miss basketball is undefeated. Nevertheless, Mississippi State, with freshman sensation Josh Hubbard, is ranked higher despite two losses and Southern Miss is playing better with two straight victories. Meanwhile, Mississippi will be a decided underdog in the Mississippi-Alabama high school all-star game Saturday in Hattiesburg.
Most of Mississippi’s Republican statewide officials and its two U.S. senators have endorsed Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency, according to an article published by Politico on Monday.
Seven out of the state’s eight statewide officials endorsed the former president. The only statewide official who is not endorsing Trump’s campaign is Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson. Watson’s office told Mississippi Today that the secretary of state is planning to stay neutral because he will help administer the state’s election.
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican who faces reelection next year, told Mississippi Today in a statement that he supports a “return to the strong and effective economic, national security, and border security policies our nation enjoyed under President Trump.”
U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican from Brookhaven, announced her endorsement of Trump in an April social media post, saying, “Trump has been attentive to the needs of Mississippi.”
“Therefore, I am endorsing Donald J. Trump for another term in the White House and will be working to assist him in winning the Republican nomination for President in 2024,” Hyde-Smith said.
The endorsement signals the former president’s tight grip on the Magnolia State. The Iowa caucuses, the first Republican primary test of the year, is Jan. 15. Mississippi’s GOP primary will be held on March 12.
The state Medicaid director and a hospital CEO — neither of them doctors — bucked recommendations from health care professionals and delayed a vote that could have made it easier for expecting Mississippians to receive timely prenatal care.
The move comes just days after the release of a maternal mortality report that shows Mississippi is still one of the most dangerous places in the country to give birth.
The Mississippi Medical Care Advisory Committee heard presentations from Dr. Anita Henderson, former president of the state pediatric association, and Dr. Jaleen Sims, a Jackson-based OB-GYN. The two said at the committee’s Friday meeting that establishing pregnancy presumptive eligibility for Medicaid could make it easier to receive timely prenatal care in Mississippi.
The committee —made up of 11 members appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the House — is tasked by state law to advise the Division of Medicaid, which covers most births in Mississippi. The committee’s recommendation to the state Legislature this past year to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage was influential in the legislation’s subsequent passage.
Medicaid Director Drew Snyder, appointed by former Gov. Phil Bryant and reappointed by Gov. Tate Reeves, has not supported Medicaid expansion and was reluctant to endorse expanding postpartum care to mothers despite the urging of doctors this past year, in line with Reeves. On Friday, Snyder urged the committee to hold off on recommending presumptive Medicaid eligibility for expectant mothers. Kent Nicaud, a hospital CEO who is a strong political supporter of Reeves, aided Snyder in the effort by amending a motion that would have recommended the policy’s adoption.
Pregnancy presumptive eligibility allows people to receive health care when they’re pregnant, even if they’re not on Medicaid because it’s presumed that they qualify.
It’s an important step to reducing barriers to timely care. It can be complicated to get pregnancy Medicaid coverage, and those complications can mean the difference between a preventable pregnancy-related death and a safe delivery.
Though Medicaid policy states a person can qualify by simply attesting they are pregnant, most doctors and expecting people are under the impression a pregnancy test from a health care provider is required to be covered. Sims previously told Mississippi Today that despite the division’s policy, her patients applying for Medicaid have been asked for further confirmation to verify they’re pregnant.
That means Mississippians generally must pay out-of-pocket for a doctor’s pregnancy test test because they’re not presumed eligible for Medicaid. Then they must wait for their Medicaid application to be approved to receive care, unless they’re willing to continue paying out-of-pocket. Some doctors won’t even see them before they’re insured.
The division does retroactively reimburse prenatal care after applications are approved, but Matt Westerfield, spokesperson for the Division of Medicaid, told Mississippi Today last year that it takes the agency about 24 days to approve pregnancy applications.
Following the doctors’ presentations at the committee meeting, State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney made a motion for the committee to recommend the adoption of pregnancy presumptive eligibility to the Legislature or the division.
“Give these women a chance to have their babies,” Edney said. “Why wouldn’t we do it if we’re in such a crisis?”
After the motion was seconded, however, Snyder spoke up in opposition.
“Twenty minutes of discussion from two presenters is not enough on this complex issue,” Snyder said. “Rather than saying, ‘Let’s do everything we can,’ let’s do what’s smart and what works and what’s actually connected to improving outcomes.”
Snyder, an attorney, asked the committee if the division could consider and research the policy and return to the committee with their findings.
Dr. Billy Long, a gastroenterologist based in Madison, then expressed confusion about who had the power to establish the policy.
“I thought I heard you say, ‘Medicaid could not make this decision,’” he said to Snyder.
Snyder replied, “That’s correct, we need to send this to the Legislature,” and then immediately declined to get into the “nuances.”
It’s not clear what agency has the power to establish presumptive eligibility. Snyder, appointed Medicaid director by former Gov. Phil Bryant and reappointed by Reeves, has said previously that the Division of Medicaid wouldn’t utilize pregnancy presumptive eligibility unless directed to by the Legislature. Westerfield previously told Mississippi Today that position is to avoid paying “providers for services for women who subsequently would not qualify for Medicaid.”
Nicaud then suggested that Medicaid bring more information to the committee at a special meeting in January and repeatedly stressed that “educating” patients might be more helpful to improving outcomes for mothers and babies in Mississippi than presumptive eligibility.
Nicaud, who also doesn’t have a medical degree, is the president and CEO of Gulfport’s Memorial Health System and has donated almost $125,000 to Reeves since 2017.
Nicaud encouraged Edney to modify his motion, which Edney declined to do.
“We endorse the concept of presumptive eligibility unless there’s a reason we cannot,” Edney said. “If there’s an extra meeting, I’d be happy to attend.”
Nicaud then amended Edney’s motion to call a special meeting to discuss presumptive eligibility further and then make the committee’s recommendation to the division or Legislature.
Following the meeting, Snyder quickly left the Capitol chamber where the meeting was held and refused to take questions.
Henderson later expressed disappointment about the committee’s decision.
“Personally, I think it’s a no brainer,” she said. “I think this is an issue everyone should be on board with. If the rest of the country is, why aren’t we?”
Mississippi is one of 21 states as of January 2020 that doesn’t offer presumptive eligibility for pregnant people, according to KFF, and Mississippi is one of just three states that has not expanded Medicaid nor established presumptive eligibility.
According to a study commissioned with the University of Mississippi Center for Population Studies by the Center for Mississippi Health Policy, preterm births are less likely for low-income people when they live in a state with presumptive eligibility and expanded Medicaid.
Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, and Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, say they will co-author a bill this upcoming Legislative session about presumptive eligibility for pregnant women. A previous attempt to establish presumptive eligibility by Rep. Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, did not make it out of committee this past session.
An ink engraving of P.B.S. Pinchback, the first Black governor of Louisiana. Credit: The New York Public Library sketch
P.B.S. Pinchback became governor in Louisiana — the first Black officeholder to do so in the U.S. He was appointed to the position during impeachment proceedings against the elected governor.
His father was a white Mississippi plantation owner, and his mother had been freed from slavery before her son was born. When his father died, he and his family moved to Ohio, and by age 12 he was supporting his family, eventually working on Mississippi River steamboats.
He was so light-skinned he could have “passed” for white, but when the Civil War came, he eventually served as a captain for the 74th U.S. Colored Infantry.
During Reconstruction, the Republican politician helped establish Louisiana’s new constitution and was elected state senator before serving as lieutenant governor and then governor.
In “Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War,” Nicholas Lemann described Pinchback as a larger than life figure — “newspaper publisher, gambler, orator, speculator, dandy, mountebank (who) served for a few months as the state’s governor and claimed seats in both houses of (Democratically controlled) Congress following disputed elections but could not persuade the members of either party to seat him.”
Pinchback helped establish Southern University for Black students and aided Homer Plessy’s challenge of segregation in public transportation.
A coalition of civic and legal organizations on Thursday called for the Hinds County Election Commission to provide clear answers to voters on why numerous voting precincts in the state’s most populous county ran out of ballots during the Nov. 7 election.
The group, which includes organizations like Mississippi Votes and the League of Women Voters, told the media that some of the consortium’s representatives have attempted to schedule a meeting with the election commissioners, but the county rejected that request.
Amir Badat, a voting rights attorney with the Legal Defense Fund, told reporters that the coalition is actively working to ensure that whatever issues the commission may have caused on Election Day will not happen in future elections.
“We’d like to ensure that whatever things went wrong – which we’re still trying to investigate – which steps went wrong and which boxes weren’t checked are checked,” Badat said.
The commissioners did not respond to a request for comment about the press conference or the demands from the coalition.
During Mississippi’s statewide general election, several Hinds County voting precincts ran out of ballots. The county is majority Black and an area that traditionally votes for Democratic candidates.
People waited in line for hours to vote as local officials attempted to replenish ballots and deliver them to polling places. It’s unclear how many people left without voting or decided not to travel to polling precincts because of the confusion from the shortages.
The Mississippi Center for Justice, a legal nonprofit, recently submitted public records requests with the county and the commission to gather more information about the ballot issues. If the commission does not comply with the records request, the center said it was prepared to use legal action to obtain those records.
While the coalition’s Thursday morning efforts were mainly focused on the Hinds County ballot shortages, it also highlighted that other issues happened in other parts of the state such as people with mobility issues not having adequate access to enter and exit polling precincts.
“It’s not a Hinds County problem in and of itself,” Harya Tarekegn, the director of advocacy and policy for the Mississippi Center for Justice, said. “It’s a problem all across this state.”
Federal officials are seeking answers from the county. Bryan Steil, the chairman of the Committee on House Administration, sent a letter to the commission on Tuesday asking them to provide Congress information on what steps it has taken to correct the Election Day issues.
“Situations like this reported ballot shortage and the distribution of incorrect ballot styles have the potential to damage voter confidence at a time when we can least afford it,” Steil wrote.
In the meantime, the commission will hold its regular meeting at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 12 at the Hinds County Circuit Courthouse. It will allow the public to offer comments about their experiences during Election Day .
After years of Jacksonians feeling out of the loop about whether they were under a boil water notice, one resident has started a new text service to try to better inform those affected.
Amit Patel, a consultant with a background in aerospace, moved to Jackson from Los Angeles four years ago. He soon encountered the alerts that are familiar to everyone in the city: boil water notices. Patel said he grew up in South Africa where he became familiar with similar infrastructure issues, and got used to the frequent water disruptions in Jackson. But what stood out to him, he said, was the lack of official communication.
“It was always odd to me that it was hard to find out when there was a boil water notice,” Patel said, adding that he’d usually find out about the notices through word of mouth. “I’ve never actually gotten an email, a physical notice. Maybe we got something in the mail, I can’t remember. But the timing of it would be such that the notice might even be over by the time we got notified.”
Patel, who recently left a Silicon Valley-based tech job, said he came up with the idea for a text service for Jackson’s boil water notices while having drinks with friends, before realizing that it might be something people want.
The service, he explained, compiles boil notices for Jackson that appear on the website for the Mississippi State Department of Health, which regulates drinking water in the state. People who are signed up then get a text message saying when the notice was issued, for which streets, and a link to the MSDH posting. To get notices, residents can text “join” to 833-366-2498, or visit his website for more information.
Patel said that 150 people signed up for the tool in the first three days after launching it.
Such notices have become extremely common for Jackson — which has issued over 400 of them since 2020 alone — and officials attribute them to the city’s aging, undersized water lines, which are susceptible to weather changes and soil movement.
Boil water notices alone don’t signify that the drinking water is unsafe. But because reduced pressure after a water line bursts can allow contamination, health officials recommend as a precaution to boil water for at least a minute before consuming, or being used to brush teeth or make baby formula. Full instructions for what to do during a notice are on the MSDH website.
JXN Water, which has been in charge of the system for the last year, issues the notices on its website as well as with notifications on Nextdoor, a neighborhood networking website.
Last Thursday, the company issued a boil water notice for 20 homes just south of Lake Hico. Some of the residents became aware there were issues when a crew arrived on Friday morning to make an emergency repair and, without notice, shut off their water. While the water came back on that same morning, residents told Mississippi Today they were unaware they were under a boil water notice.
“I didn’t know nothing about a boil water notice,” said Robert Moore, adding that he’s usually out of the loop when those notices are issued.
When asked about notifying residents, JXN Water Communications Manager Ameerah Palacios said that the company’s current system goes “above and beyond the standard protocol for Jackson.” Both Moore and Patel said that the lack of communication goes back to before JXN Water took over.
According to MSDH guidelines, if a boil notice is issued to only “a few” residents, the system should “notify (customers) by personal contact, door-hangers, or notes taped to their doors.” If it affects a large number of residents, it says to also alert local media.
Patel said that he’s grateful for the work JXN Water has been doing and that he hopes he can collaborate with them, adding that there’s room for improvement in the way the company notifies residents.
“I think that’s one flaw with the system,” he said. “If you don’t have a Nextdoor account, how do you get that information?”
Palacios declined to comment on Patel’s new service.
Other residents and local advocates raised similar concerns to U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate, who is overseeing the role of JXN Water, back in September. In court filings, both Brooke Floyd and Danyelle Holmes — with the People’s Advocacy Institute and the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, respectively — wrote that Jackson residents were often unaware that their homes were under boil water notice.
“(Our) work to notify residents of boil water notices is necessary because the local, state, or federal government entities involved in the water crisis have not been providing consistent, adequate notice to residents,” Holmes wrote.
Too bad college football’s 12-team College Football Playoff system doesn’t go into effect until next season — too bad on so many fronts.
If the 12-team plan were in effect this year, Ole Miss likely would be the 11-seed and would play 6-seed Georgia in a first-round game. No, the Rebels would not beat Georgia — no way, no how. But they would be in the first 12 team national championship playoffs, and that would be huge.
Rick Cleveland
More importantly – although not necessarily so to Mississippians – Georgia would also be in the tournament, and the Bulldogs might well be the betting favorite.
What’s more, Florida State, a perfect 13-0, would still be in the hunt, as well the Seminoles should be. Yeah, I know, FSU’s starting quarterback would not play and the Seminoles would not win it all, but if you win 13 straight games, including a 21-point smashing of LSU, you deserve to be part of the process. (I can’t even fathom how badly Greenville St. Joseph product Trey Benson must feel about all this. All he did this season is score 15 touchdowns and account for 1,132 yards from scrimmage for a 13-0 team and now must watch the playoffs on TV.)
Florida State, which would be the 5-seed, would play 12-seed Liberty in a first-round game. Other first-round games would include 9-seed Missouri at 8-seed Oregon in a delicious matchup, and 10-seed Penn State would play at 7-seed Ohio State.
Then in the semifinals, 4-seed Alabama would play the Florida State-Liberty winner, 3-seed Texas would play the Ole Miss-Georgia winner, 2-seed Washington would play the Ohio State-Penn State winner, and top seed Michigan would play the Missouri-Oregon winner.
And then, when all is said and done, either Georgia or Alabama would be crowned champion. Just kidding. This is one year where the two SEC behemoths are not clearly the best in the country. (Although I would not bet against Alabama.)
As for this year’s four-team playoff, the CFP committee is simply making the best of a terrible system. And I know what many are thinking: How can Alabama, with a home loss to Texas, still be playing while Florida State sits on the playoffs sidelines? Well, Georgia, which just lost to Alabama in the SEC Championship game, is a 14-point favorite over Florida State in the Orange Bowl. Florida State, without its starting quarterback, is simply not one of the best four teams in the country. Not that injuries should decide who makes the playoffs and who doesn’t.
Even with the new playoff system next year, college football faces much bigger problems than this year’s CFP controversy.
Quite simply, college football is a complete and absolute mess, a willing slave to the almighty dollar. So much is wrong with it, one scarcely knows where to begin.
Start with this: Next season, Southern Cal and UCLA, not to mention Oregon and Washington, will play in the same conference as Rutgers and Maryland. Meanwhile, Cal and Stanford, which are near the Pacific Ocean, will play across the continent in the Atlantic Coast Conference, named for that other ocean. UCF will play in the Big 12, which will have 16 teams. Not to be outdone, the Big 10 will be composed of 18 teams. The Big 18? Makes as much sense as Rutgers being in the same league with Southern Cal.
And we haven’t event gotten to the biggest issues college football faces. And those would be the NIL and the transfer portal. Nebraska coach Matt Rhule opened some eyes last week when he said that starting quarterbacks at the highest level of college football will cost you anywhere between $1 million and $2 million in NIL money. Meanwhile, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, who has led his team to a 9-3 record, makes $875,000 a year. This is not exactly what administrators had in mind back when Rutgers and Princeton teed it up for the first college football game on Nov. 6, 1869.
Student-athletes? More like mercenaries. Don’t fall too deeply in love with your star player this year because he might play for your arch-rival next year. I don’t begrudge the players making some bucks – after all, they take the risks – but when college players make more than established pros, that’s not right. And we haven’t even talked about competitive balance. The NFL has a salary cap; college football does not. Without one, the rich will just get richer and the poor will get the hell beat out of them.
It’s all out of whack. Texas A&M is paying Jimbo Fisher $76 million not to coach and has hired another coach that it will presumably pay another $42 million over the next six years. The Aggies will be paying one man more not to coach than it will pay another man to really coach. How’s that for insanity? Ole Miss reportedly pays a starting running back about the same as it pays its chancellor. The Ole Miss football coach makes 74 times the annual salary of the Mississippi governor.
Meanwhile, if you plan attend a college football game in person, you won’t know whether it’s a day game or a night game until a week or so beforehand, and then you will sit through 14 TV timeouts averaging three minutes, 30 seconds each. That’s why a 60-minute game usually last three and a half hours or more, which is a long time to sit in 95-degree heat for an early September game that begins at 11 a.m.
TV pays the bills (and all those salaries). That’s why TV calls the shots. I hate it. Indeed, I have spent a lifetime going to college football games and most of a lifetime writing about it. Frankly, I have never enjoyed it less.
