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Flanked by residents and student physicians from all over the state, Mississippi doctors and the Mississippi State Medical Association had one ask for Speaker of the House Phillip Gunn on Wednesday. 

“We’re simply asking the speaker to allow (Senate Bill) 2212 to be brought for a vote,” said Dr. Anita Henderson, a pediatrician from Hattiesburg. 

Last year, Gunn killed the legislation before it could be brought to a vote on the House floor. He has been noncommittal as to whether he will allow his chamber to vote on it this session.

In a press conference hosted on the second floor of the Capitol, Mississippi doctors emphasized the importance of extending postpartum care in the state and at times spoke directly to the House, asking them to pass SB 2212 to extend Medicaid postpartum coverage from 60 days to 12 months.

According to a Mississippi Today poll of House lawmakers conducted this session, a majority support extending the health insurance coverage for moms on Medicaid. 

Currently, Mississippi women who have Medicaid have health insurance coverage for two months after giving birth. But many women in Mississippi and other states who have not expanded Medicaid lose coverage after that, despite complications associated with recovering from pregnancy continuing past that point. 

Wyoming’s Senate and Utah’s House are currently considering similar legislation. Mississippi and Wyoming are the only two states with neither extended postpartum coverage nor expanded Medicaid.

“I know that those moms are suffering, and I know that those babies are likely to suffer as well,” Henderson said. “Babies need their mothers, and their mothers need health care.”

SB 2212 was passed by the full Senate on Feb. 7. It’s the second time in four years the Republican-led Senate has voted in favor of extending postpartum care. 

The bill now goes to the House, where Speaker Phillip Gunn’s office will likely assign it to the House Medicaid Committee. 

When cornered by media on Wednesday afternoon and asked whether he planned to take up the Senate postpartum bill, Rep. Joey Hood, who chairs the House Medicaid Committee and represents Ackerman, responded, “We’re just going to continue to work it through the process.” When asked follow ups about when the House Medicaid Committee was going to meet and what he thought about the MSMA calling on him to extend postpartum coverage, he repeated the statement several times. 

In spite of urging from health professionals for years, state leaders like Gov. Tate Reeves and Gunn have remained steadfast in their opposition. 

Gunn has repeatedly referred to the bill as Medicaid expansion, another hotly contested Mississippi legislative issue. He indicated to WAPT on Wednesday he would not allow the bill to come up for a vote for that reason. 

But the bill doesn’t expand Medicaid eligibility — it extends coverage for those already on Medicaid. Gunn has also said that he’s waiting on the state Division of Medicaid to take a stance on the issue, which they’ve refused. 

“It’s really not a right versus left issue,” Henderson said. “It’s a right versus wrong issue.”

Reeves last week said he needs more data to support that the legislation will help mothers. 

Donning a button that said “The Kids Sent Me,” Henderson presented lots of data: Two-thirds of babies born in Mississippi are born to mothers on Medicaid, and the state’s already-dismal maternal mortality rate is worsening. Mississippi has the highest infant mortality rate, preterm birth rate and low birthweight rate in the country.  

Things are only set to get worse: The state’s neonatal ICUs and labor and delivery units are closing. With the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn abortion rights last summer, the state is expecting thousands more births.  

And when a baby is born prematurely, it can cost the state more than half a million dollars more. 

Every medical organization and the state economic council supports the extension of postpartum care for a reason, Henderson said. 

“Children are 25% of our population, but 100% of our future,” Henderson said. “What I’m here to tell you is the future of Mississippi is being born right now … and if we want Mississippi to look differently in 10 years, in 20 years, we need to address maternal mortality, and we need to tackle the problem of prematurity.”

Dr. Michelle Owens, an OB-GYN board-certified in maternal fetal medicine, said the situation is dire. 

“The process of transitioning back to a non-pregnant state is not arbitrarily cut off at 60 days, or at two months,” Owens said. “It takes almost a year to have a baby. It takes almost a year to get back.”

Henderson said she frequently sees mothers who are suffering from postnatal conditions like postpartum depression, hypertension and cardiomyopathy long after they give birth. 

When she screens new mothers and they present complications after 60 days, there’s not much she can do. 

Owens said the extension of coverage has the potential to be “transformative.”

“Mississippi moms can’t wait, and Mississippi has waited long enough,” she said.

The post ‘Mississippi moms can’t wait.’ Doctors urge legislators to extend postpartum coverage appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Thanks to a new federal program, a few rural Mississippi hospitals at risk of closure might have been given a lifeline. 

The Mississippi Department of Health finalized its rules for “rural emergency hospitals” last week, so Mississippi rural hospitals with less than 50 beds and critical access hospitals can now apply for the designation. 

Critical access hospitals — another designation designed to reduce hospital financial strain — must have 25 or fewer inpatient beds, be located 35 miles from another hospital, maintain an annual hospital stay of less than 96 hours for patients and provide full-time emergency services.

The federal government created the rural emergency hospital program, which was finalized in November, to ease the financial strain of rural hospitals across the country at risk of closure.

To qualify, the hospitals must agree to have emergency care available all day, every day, and provide observation care and outpatient services. 

But there’s one more catch: In exchange for monthly payments and higher Medicare reimbursements, rural emergency hospitals must end all inpatient care and discharge or transfer its patients to bigger hospitals within 24 hours of their arrival. 

Ryan Kelly, executive director of the Mississippi Rural Health Association, said the program is ideal for hospitals that have low patient counts and are in deep financial distress.

“It’s a good opportunity,” Kelly said. “This is no silver bullet, but the more tools we can put in the tool belt to solve this issue, the better.”

The premise of the program is that so many rural hospitals already struggle with low census counts and inpatient care costs far higher than what they’re paid. In states that have not expanded Medicaid, the program could be a solution for small hospitals that only operate some of the health services in their communities and have shuttered other units in order to maintain operations. 

Harold Miller, president and CEO of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, takes issue with several of the program’s requirements.  

Seniors whose health conditions most often need more intensive care might have to be transferred to a larger facility if their local hospital is a rural emergency hospital, and transferring patients is no longer as easy as it used to be, he said. Bigger hospitals, already under strain, must be willing to accept them. 

The University of Mississippi Medical Center, for example, was on diversion (or at capacity) for both critical care and medical-surgical beds consistently from Jan. 30 to Feb. 11 of this year, according to a website that tracks hospitals on diversion. The website is updated at least twice a day. 

Richard Roberson, the vice president of state policy for the Mississippi Hospital Association, said UMMC is not alone. 

“You always had hospitals go on diversion, even prior to COVID, so that’s not a new thing … but what we’re seeing now is more and more diversions becoming the norm in some places,” he said. 

Hospitals – even larger ones – are making decisions based on limited budgets, inadequate nurse staffing and increased wages for employees.

“Unfortunately, what’s happening is it’s impacting patient care,” said Roberson. 

Additionally, when a facility is converted into a rural emergency hospital, it can no longer provide swing bed services. In that case, when there’s no separate skilled nursing facility, the community loses its nursing home, too. 

Rural emergency hospitals also can’t utilize the federal 340B drug pricing program, which allows hospitals that treat low-income populations to buy prescription drugs at a discount. 

“For some very small hospitals, all of the changes in payments might mean that the hospital is more profitable than it was before,” Miller said. “But it also has to eliminate services for the community in order to do that. Why should a small rural hospital that is losing money be forced to eliminate important services in order to get higher payment?”

And still, there is no guarantee that the hospital will be paid enough to remain open, Miller said. 

However, for some Mississippi communities in danger of losing their only hospital, the payoff might be worth the risk. 

According to a report from the CHQPR, 19 out of the state’s 74 rural hospitals are at risk of closing within the next two to three years, putting Mississippi fourth in the country for percentage of rural hospitals at immediate risk of closure. 

The University of North Carolina’s Sheps Center estimates that more than 1,700 hospitals might be eligible. Kelly said he estimates around five Mississippi hospitals will qualify for the program. 

Though the federal program took effect Jan. 1, the state had to finalize its qualifications before hospitals could begin applying for the designation. 

Mississippi will be one of the first states to roll out the program, Kelly said. 

“We’ve been waiting on the Department of Health to finalize their rules,” he said. “Now, they have the guidelines that they need to follow through and begin work.”

To become rural emergency hospitals, officials must first notify the MDSH Office of Licensure of their intent to convert, provide required documents and complete the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ application. Then, they must complete an initial survey, and apply for an MSDH rural emergency hospital license. 

Community Health Editor Kate Royals contributed reporting to this story.

The post Under a new program, rural hospitals could get more money — but they have to end inpatient care appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The House Republican majority flexed its muscle Tuesday and abruptly cut off Democrats’ efforts to offer amendments that aimed to improve the health of poor Mississippi women and children.

The debate came on Republican-authored House Bill 1671, which provides multiple tax credits for businesses and individuals for making contributions to pregnancy crisis centers that were created to try to curb abortion in the state and for contributions to various adoptions services.

The bill, Republican supporters said, was designed to provide additional help for women and children after the 2022 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court ending a national right to an abortion and resulting in a near total abortion ban in Mississippi.

Democrats had planned to offer multiple additional amendments that they said would provide additional help for women and children. The amendments, all based on Democratic bills Republicans killed earlier in the session without debate or a vote, included:

• Extending postpartum Medicaid coverage for new mothers from 60 days to one year as at least 35 other states had done.
• Increasing welfare benefits for poor mothers and children.
• Placing more oversight over the Mississippi Department of Human Services as a result of the ongoing scandal where at least $77 million in welfare funds were misspent, resulting in the criminal conviction of some public officials and private contractors.

“We let rich Mississippians steal welfare funds. This amendment simply says we will raise the allotment for (poor) women and children,” said Rep. Robert Johnson, the House Democratic leader from Natchez. “If you don’t want to take care of them in the hospital, at least vote to feed them.”

But Democrats didn’t get the chance to offer and debate most of their amendments. On motions by Rep. Steve Massengill, a Hickory Flat Republican, the GOP majority voted to cut off debate on two Democratic amendments, though a handful of Republican members voted with Democrats to debate those issues.

Then Rep. Jody Steverson, a Republican from Ripley, voted to stop the amendment process and to end debate on the bill. Steverson’s motion to end debate prevailed 68-46, though four Republicans voted with the Democrats. The four Republicans opposing the Steverson motion were Becky Currie of Brookhaven, Jansen Owen of Poplarville, Kent McCarty of Hattiesburg and Dana McLean of Columbus.

Before the vote, various Democrats pleaded with their Republican colleagues that debate be allowed to continue.

“These amendments are in support of women, families and children in the state of Mississippi,” said Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Jackson. “…Let’s vote them up or down. That is the process.”

Johnson said, “When a motion is made to table an amendment, that means they (Republicans) don’t want to hear what you have to say. That means they don’t they want anybody to know what we are up here doing. That means an issue as important as mothers, children and the birth and the life and the ability to survive, nobody wants to talk about it …The public will know that not only are you against women and children, but against the democratic process.”

READ MORE: How House Republicans are avoiding tough votes on health care solutions

As Democrats made their case to Republican colleagues to allow debate on the amendments to continue, several House Republicans sitting in the chamber were noticeably ignoring their Democratic colleagues. Republican Rep. Nick Bain, pictured above, tossed a ball and laughed loudly with several GOP colleagues as Summers spoke about the need to continue debate and help poor women.

The Republicans’ motion to cut off debate came after Rep. Omeria Scott, a Democrat from Laurel, had opted to slow the legislative process down earlier Tuesday by requiring a handful of bills to be read before final passage. Scott demanded the reading of bills after Speaker of the House Philip Gunn prevented her from asking questions on a bill. Gunn had ruled the time to ask questions had passed.

“The chairman asked me to do it,” Steverson said when asked why he chose to make the motion to end debate. “I was glad to do it. If they (Democrats) want to lengthen the day, we can shorten the day. It is a two-way street.”

Rep. Trey Lamar, the Republican from Senatobia and powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the decision was made to cut off debate because of the bill reading.

“It looked like it was going to go on for a while,” Lamar said.

Rep. Tommy Reynolds, a Democrat from Water Valley and one of the longest serving legislators in the House, said of the cutting off of the debate: “The thing is, all the cartilage that was there in years past is now gone. It’s bone on bone … I miss moderation. But it’s not in fashion anymore these days.”

The post House Republicans abruptly end debate as Democrats offer amendments to help poor women, children appeared first on Mississippi Today.

With a Wednesday deadline for action on major tax cuts, elimination or rebates, Republican House and Senate leaders said such measures don’t appear likely, largely due to lack of support from fellow Republicans who hold supermajorities in both chambers.

“There’s tremendous support to eliminate the tax on work (income tax) in the Mississippi House of Representatives,” Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, said Tuesday. “… But a small group in the Republican Caucus doesn’t want us to take it up, and we are on notice the Democrats are going to block vote against it. It’s a three-fifths vote, so that’s where it’s at.”

In the Senate, Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann had vowed to push for income tax rebate checks for Mississippians. But Finance Chairman Josh Harkins, R-Flowood, on Tuesday said many in the Senate are more focused on “paying off debt, not taking on more debt, infrastructure needs and a lot of other financial issues to consider.”

READ MORE: Phase out income tax or cut taxpayers checks? GOP lawmakers, governor disagree

Hosemann late last week had lamented lack of support for his tax rebate checks proposal in the Senate and said, “I still think it’s a good idea.”

The Legislature, after much internecine Republican fighting that threatened to derail other legislation, last year passed the largest income tax cuts in state history, to be phased in over four years. House Speaker Philip Gunn had pushed for eliminating the state income tax. Hosemann had pushed for more measured cuts. The end result: Mississippi after the cuts are fully made in 2026 will have one of the lowest income taxes in the nation.

READ MORE: 5 things to know about the Great Mississippi Tax Cut Battle of 2022

But tax revenue has continued to pour in at record pace, and there’s a $3.9 billion surplus in state coffers. This prompted Gunn to re-up his vow to eliminate the personal income tax, and Hosemann to advocate one-time rebate checks for taxpayers and talk of cutting or eliminating the state’s sales tax on groceries, among the highest in the nation.

Hosemann and Senate leaders said the national and state economies are in turbulent, inflationary times with recession possible, and that much of the state surplus is from unprecedented federal spending that isn’t likely to continue. They warn that fully eliminating the income tax in such uncertain economic times is foolhardy. Many state business leaders, including the state’s chamber of commerce, shared this trepidation last legislative session.

Gunn and and House leaders said Mississippi’s economy is on a roll that will continue, and that eliminating the personal income tax would help the state compete for economic development. Gunn points to nine states with no income tax, including Florida, Tennessee and Texas, as having thriving economies and growing population.

Wednesday is the deadline for first floor action on revenue and appropriations bills. Since late last week, media, lobbyists and other observers had hovered around Ways and Means and Finance meetings, expecting them to roll out major tax cut or rebate bills. Both Lamar and Harkins had indicated such measures might be forthcoming.

On Tuesday, both indicated they are not forthcoming.

Leaders in both chambers on Tuesday said tax cuts could still be in the offing this session, and that bills are still alive where cuts or breaks could be added as amendments. But that becomes far more unlikely after Wednesday’s deadline, when introducing new tax cut legislation would require a two-thirds vote to suspend rules, a monumental hurdle.

Lamar on Tuesday said a “small number, maybe 10 or 12” of the 122-member House’s 76 Republicans indicated they didn’t want to take up income tax elimination. Other legislative sources reported more than double the number of Republicans Lamar reported were balking.

“I do chalk a lot of it up to it being an election year, although you would think during an election year they would want to eliminate the tax on work,” Lamar said.

Lamar said he would still be open to any tax cuts, including sales taxes on groceries.

“What I can tell you is the Mississippi House of Representatives has voted for income tax elimination, voted to cut car tags in half, and voted to cut grocery taxes in half. The Mississippi House of Representative’s commitment to tax reform is unquestioned … I believe with all my heart that ending the income tax, joining the nine other states that don’t have it, is the right policy for the future of Mississippi.”

Harkins said: “I thought we had a deal on taxes last year — to be worked in over four years. I feel like we settled the tax issue last year for the time being.”

The post Tax cuts, rebates fizzle from lack of GOP support in Legislature appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi is battling an outbreak of C. auris, a fungal infection resistant to medication, which the Department of Health says may be responsible for the deaths of four people. 

“Our investigation is ongoing and fluid,” said health department spokesperson Liz Sharlot. 

Sharlot said the department has identified 12 clinical cases of the infection and four “potentially associated deaths.” Both those numbers doubled since State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers last gave a report about the infections to the Board of Health in January. 

C. auris is still rare in the United States. The people most vulnerable to an invasive infection – such as in the blood, heart or brain —  are already sick from other medical conditions.  

At the center of the Mississippi outbreak is a long-term care facility in central Mississippi. Some patients with the infection have also received care at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. 

When patients with a C. auris infection arrive at the hospital, they are each assigned one nurse who cares for them exclusively, according to UMMC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lisa Didion.

“That’s how dangerous this is,” Didion said last week during a Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Health Affairs Committee meeting. 

Doctors first identified C. auris — or Candida auris — in Asia in 2009. It has quickly become a cause of severe infections around the world with some strains resistant to all three available classes of antifungals. 

The yeast — a type of fungus — can be carried on patients’ skin without causing infection or symptoms, allowing it to easily spread to others. 

The Department of Health says it has identified 53 “colonized” patients, meaning patients who aren’t sick with an active infection but were found to be carrying the organism somewhere on their body. That number was 37 about four weeks ago. 

“When we get patients  from that facility (in Central Mississippi), we really have to be sure that we isolate them appropriately,” Didion said of the care at UMMC. “This particular organism is extremely transmissible and has a very high mortality rate.” 

The CDC has found that C. auris spreads most often in long-term health care facilities among patients with severe medical problems. The fungus can cause bloodstream infections and death. More than 1 in 3 patients with an invasive infection of C. auris will die, according to CDC research. 

Mississippi’s first cases were identified in November 2022, Byers wrote in a January update on the outbreak. 

“This is a rapidly expanding and serious situation,” Byers said at the time. 

The majority of cases are based in one long-term care facility but a second central Mississippi facility has some patients with detected colonization. A handful of other cases have been reported at other health care facilities across the state, according to Byers’ update. 

C. auris is resistant to some commonly used disinfectants. In response, the health department has asked health care facilities across the state to obtain the appropriate products in preparation should the outbreak grow. 

Didion said while they have treated patients with the infection, they have had no transmission of the fungus within the hospital so far. 

“But it is a reason to stay focused,” she said. 

The post Medicine-resistant fungal infection, C. auris, potentially linked to four deaths in Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

At the time Gov. Tate Reeves appointed a Flowood neurosurgeon to the State Board of Health, the doctor said he was committed to “sound, science-based policy.” 

But two years later, he has at least three times made dismissive and what other health experts see as ill-informed commentary on social media about public health issues. 

Gov. Tate Reeves in 2021 appointed Dr. John D. Davis to the State Board of Health to fill the six-year term of Dr. Ed “Tad” Barham, who had died. 

At the time he was appointed, Davis said he was “committed to sound, science-based policy with efficient execution” and looked forward to addressing “important matters that impact the health and lives of Mississippians,” according to a Health Department press release.  

In a now-deleted tweet, however, he seemed unconcerned about the rise in Mississippi babies with syphilis. 

“It’s not hard to go a lifetime and never contact syphilis. It doesn’t fall out of the sky. And it’s easy to treat if you have sex with someone who has it and gives ot (sic) to you,” he tweeted in response to a Mississippi Today story about a 900% increase in congenital syphilis cases in the state. 

After Mississippi Today reached out to Davis about this and other statements last week, he deleted the tweet and updated his Twitter bio to state:  “All opinions provided are mine alone, and they should not be construed as representing any other individual or organization.” 

Mississippi now leads the country in cases of the sexually transmitted infection. Syphilis can cause miscarriages and death. Children born with the disease can have major malformations and life-long complications. 

In 2016, eight babies in Mississippi were born and hospitalized with syphilis. In 2021, that number hit 106, according to data former State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs shared based on Health Department and hospital discharge numbers. While syphilis cases in infants have gone up nationwide, Mississippi’s rate of increase is nearly five times the national average.

Several messages left with Davis at his office in Flowood were not returned. 

Reeves’ office did not respond to a request for comment on Davis’ statements. 

The State Board of Health is an 11-member board that provides policy direction for the health agency. 

Dr. Khalil Ghanem, president of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association and a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins medical school, shared a response to those tweets with Mississippi Today. 

“While some people do live their lives without getting syphilis, others do not. What these two groups have in common is the desire to have healthy children who are afforded an opportunity to achieve success and happiness in their lives. Unfortunately, syphilis often robs the parents and their children of these opportunities,” Ghanem, whose expertise includes HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, said. 

“With more than an 900% increase in the rates of this cruel but completely preventable infection, more children are being robbed of these opportunities and that should be deemed unacceptable and intolerable by all members of society who care about the welfare of children. It is critical to invest in these kids by putting an end to this senseless and preventable infection,” he continued.

Ghanem and others also point out that syphilis is not always “so easy to treat,” and many people who have syphilis do not have symptoms. According to the Mayo Clinic, people may be infected for years without ever seeing symptoms.  

During pregnancy, Ghanem said, it is critical to identify the infection before the 20th week of pregnancy for best protection of the baby. If pregnant patients aren’t screened and treated early, complications may still arise even with treatment. 

Davis expressed a similar attitude toward HIV: “It’s not difficult at all to avoid getting HIV. Does someone need government intervention to live a long life HIV (-)?” 

He made the comment in response to a news story about the state of Tennessee rejecting HIV funding from the federal government – funds that Mississippi itself accepts.

One of the Health Department’s primary roles is prevention programs for HIV. It is also tasked with disease tracking and outbreak management; lab testing for syphilis, TB, and other diseases; and prevention programs for other STDs and communicable diseases.  

The Health Department and the Mississippi Public Health Association did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Davis has also argued with the notion that contraception can be difficult to access for some Mississippians. In response to a tweet citing Sen. Nicole Akins Boyd explaining the problems women on Medicaid have accessing long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), Davis responded on Feb. 10: “Fine. While we work on improving access to longer acting contraception, use the pill or condoms. ‘I can’t help it that I got pregnant’ is not valid in 2023 (aside from the less than 1% that tragically result from rape.)” 

Birth control pills are 99% effective at preventing pregnancy when taken consistently every day. About nine out of 100 women who use the pill have unintended pregnancies every year, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Condoms are 98% effective when used perfectly but can leak, tear or come off, resulting in reduced effectiveness.

The post State Health Board member dismisses concerns about syphilis, HIV, and contraception access appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Norris Ashley died last week, and, sadly, many readers will not know of him. You should.

Norris Ashley, 75, was a high school coach, a truly great one, for Ingomar Attendance Center in Union County. That’s up in Mississippi’s Hill Country, where basketball is king and where the really successful coaches are worshiped almost as deity. Ashley won 1,697 games and nine state championships in 43 years of coaching — 41 were at Ingomar, his alma mater.

Most of you who don’t know about Ashley will know about Norman Dale, the character Gene Hackman played in the iconic 1986 movie “Hoosiers.” In the movie, Dale coached tiny Hickory to the overall Indiana state basketball championship against all odds. Simply put, Norris Ashley was Mississippi’s Norman Dale.

“I’ve watched that movie at least 10 times, probably more,” Ashley once told me. “That one hits pretty close to home.”

In 1978, back when Mississippi public high schools still played the Grand Slam, matching the champions of all the high school classifications, tiny Ingomar, with 150 students in grades 9-12, won the Slam defeating much larger schools. James Green, who was listed at 6 feet, 2 inches tall, but might have been 6-1 in his sneakers, was Ingomar’s tallest player.

“They listed me at 6-2 because it sounded better,” Green said last week. “We weren’t very big but we knew how to play. We had played together for Coach Ashley since we were in junior high. When I say we knew how to play, I mean we really knew how to play.”

As all of Ashley’s Ingomar teams did. They guarded fiercely, shared the basketball and took only the best shots. Ashley once said of that team, “We sure don’t make anybody shake in their sneakers. We don’t have a lot of height, jumping ability or physical strength, and we’re not eat up with a lot of quickness either. Sometimes when we play teams that haven’t seen us, by the time they stop laughing at us, they’re too far behind to catch up.”

Those Ingomar Falcons won 47 consecutive games over two seasons.

The first time these eyes ever saw Norris Ashley was when he played basketball at Delta State. He scored a basket at the buzzer to help the Statesmen defeat Southern Miss. He was a 6-4 forward who could jump into the rafters. In his last game for Delta State, he scored 24 points and grabbed 20 rebounds. He also played left field for Boo Ferriss, another Mississippi treasure, in baseball. He played on Boo’s 1968 team that lost in the national championship game of the Division II World Series. Says Langston Rogers, then DSU’s sports information director and now a Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer, “Norris was just a phenomenal athlete. At Union College in Jackson, Tennessee, I saw him rob a home run. I mean he must have jumped four feet high over the fence to reach up and grab that ball.”

Ashley was nicknamed “Stalk” at early age by a cotton-farming uncle who said every time he saw his nephew he had grown a few inches just like one of his cotton stalks.

After Ashley graduated from Delta State and coached the DSU freshman team one season, he coached two years at Coahoma High School before returning home to Ingomar. Ashley once recalled an older coach advising him to take the Ingomar job, saying it would be a good place to coach a year or two before he found something better. Said Ashley, four decades later, “I never found any place better.”

James Green, who played at Ole Miss and once coached Southern Miss to the Conference USA championship when the league included Louisville, Memphis, Cincinnati and Houston, believes Ashley would have been successful at any level. “He would have hated recruiting but he could coach with anybody,” Green said. “He was as fundamentally sound as any coach anywhere. He was my John Wooden.”

Ashley’s son, Jonathan Ashley, now coaches Ingomar on the basketball floor that is named for his father. Jonathan’s Ingomar Falcons won a state championship in 2020 with his father cheering from the stands. “People tell me my teams play like his did,” Jonathan Ashley told me. “For me, that’s the ultimate compliment.”

Through all the nearly 1,700 victories and nine state championships, Norris Ashley remained as humble and endearing as he was when he graduated from Ingomar at age 16.

“I guess I had a little influence,” he said upon retirement in 2012. “I got them to the game on time and made sure they had shoes and uniforms and stuff to wear. I’ve been lucky to have players who worked hard and wanted to win.”

Ashley’s funeral will be held Tuesday, appropriately, in the gym on the hardwood that bears his name. The place will be packed as it was for so many of those 1,697 victories. Surely the good people in Ingomar will see fit to name the gym after him, as well.

The post Norris Ashley: You may not have known him, but think ‘Hoosiers’ appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Note: This analysis anchored Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive access to legislative analysis and up-to-date information about what’s happening under the Capitol dome.

Rep. Bryant Clark, a Democrat from Pickens, stood on the House floor last week for what looked to be a routine amendment to a Republican-authored bill that would create an $80 million grant program for financially struggling hospitals.

All session long, Democrats have hammered Republicans for not doing more to address the Mississippi hospital crisis, which threatens to shutter dozens of medical facilities across the state. Hospital leaders, doctors and nurses, local elected officials, and many everyday Mississippians have begged lawmakers to step in to save the system.

Clark explained that his amendment would increase the Republicans’ proposed $80 million grant program to $275 million. His amendment would also have added an additional $25 million program for hospitals with 75 or fewer beds. With a $4 billion budget surplus, Clark argued, Republicans could do better to keep hospitals open than a one-time, $80 million grant program.

But as soon as Clark finished explaining his amendment, Republican Speaker of the House Philip Gunn recognized Republican Rep. Steve Massengill, who made a motion to table Clark’s amendment. That motion passed by a vote of 70-44, killing his amendment and abruptly cutting off what could have been — and perhaps should have been — a longer, earnest debate about the amount of money lawmakers should provide struggling hospitals.

In the end, Republicans did not have to vote on Clark’s amendment. They instead simply killed it and later passed exactly what they wanted: $80 million for struggling hospitals, and $80 million only.

House Republican leaders, who have nearly complete power to act without any true dissent or opposition, appear to be further tightening their grip on the legislative process by motioning to table amendments offered by Democrats. It’s a seldom used procedural move, but Republicans did it twice last week. And smart money would be on them continuing it in coming days.

READ MORE: The purposefully broken lawmaking process in Jackson

The procedure allows Republicans to avoid taking tough votes. And in the process, they can stifle debate about issues that large majorities of the state’s voters want them to address — like the state’s critical hospital crisis and other health care-related issues.

When a bill comes up on the House floor for a vote, any lawmaker can propose an amendment to that bill. This is a critical step in the legislative process that often improves pieces of legislation and ensures that the public can fully understand why or how laws are passed. Often, this is when some of the most important Mississippi political debates occur.

In the Mississippi Legislature, where Republicans have supermajority control of both the House and Senate, amendments live or die based on what the Republican chair defending the original bill says on the floor. But even under GOP rule, there is almost always fair consideration and debate of any amendment in question.

That is, until last week, when House Republicans tabled Clark’s amendment on the hospital grants bill. The move is an escalation of tension between Republican leaders and Democrats, who have virtually no voting power inside the Capitol but have implemented a pesky and persistent political strategy this session.

Here’s how Rep. Robert Johnson, the House Democratic leader from Natchez, explained it:

We introduce legislation, they kill it. It doesn’t even get a debate in committee. A lot of times, the committees don’t even meet. Republicans have a supermajority, so they’re able to do that and anything else they want to. But when we go home and constituents ask us how the Republicans voted on something, we can’t answer that question because they didn’t even allow it to come up for debate, let alone a vote. You don’t really know where Republicans stand on anything because of how they conduct business.

They’re killing all our bills — bills that would do common sense things like help hospitals keep their doors open and help poor, working folks afford trips to the doctor and help poor mothers not die after giving birth. Our next step, then, is amending legislation on the floor. That puts Republicans on the board, so to speak, on the record with the public. 

All we can do is try to make sure every Mississippian sees what’s happening. We want Republicans to be transparent with their constituents. We want everyone to know exactly where they stand on the big issues. It’s about transparency and knowing what the people you elect are doing at the Legislature. If 70-80% of the electorate wants Medicaid expansion and Republicans kill it over and over again, they’re effectively voting against the interests of the electorate. We want to put them on the board about that.

Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez

House Republicans, apparently, have caught on to the Democrats’ strategy. It’s evident that Democrats aren’t going to stop proposing amendments about additional hospital funding, about  expanding Medicaid to provide up to 300,000 working Mississippians with health care coverage, about extending postpartum Medicaid coverage to help new and expecting mothers afford decent health care.

READ MORE: Republicans don’t have to listen to their Black colleagues. That’s how they designed it.

And looking ahead on the House calendar, there are several Republican bills dealing with health care issues that Democrats could attach germane amendments to and continue trying to get Republicans “on the board.” How Republicans handle those amendments in coming days — and whether they’ll motion to table them — could inspire some high drama and further escalate tension between the party leaders.

“It’s a complete abuse of power,” Johnson said. “Republicans are just neophytes when it comes to the legislative process. They’ve got enough votes. There should be a mature way to handle everything, one that doesn’t keep Mississippi taxpayers and voters in the dark. But they take shortcuts. They go into caucus meetings and rig votes, then they cut off debate on the floor. It’s an abuse of a great deal of power, and I don’t think that’s something Mississippians will appreciate in the long run.

“We’ll continue to expose them,” Johnson continued. “People are picking it up, and I take it as an indication that our strategy has been effective. Republicans don’t want to take another vote on Medicaid expansion. I wonder why that is. Then they’re talking only $80 million for hospitals? It just pisses people off. I hope they keep it up, I really do. I just don’t think they can see how bad they look.”

READ MORE: ‘Only in Mississippi’: House votes to create white-appointed court system for Blackest city in America

The post How House Republicans are avoiding tough votes on health care solutions appeared first on Mississippi Today.

As we at Mississippi Today work to serve all of Mississippi, we want to learn how we can deepen our understanding of your information needs.

Our reporters cover the happenings of the Mississippi Legislature. They dig deep on scandals, such as the Backchannel series and Mississippi’s ongoing health care crisis. We even report on college sports and Mississippi culture.

Our work is ultimately about serving your information needs. We want to explain why things are happening, who is affected and how all of this influences your life.

We are planning to do a series of information diaries through text messaging in the weeks ahead. 

Our goal for the first information diary is to understand how 18- to 35-year-old Mississippians (and even folks who were born here and left!) consume and share information about their lives. 

If you are an 18- to 35-year-old interested in helping Mississippi Today better serve your information needs, we would love for you to participate. You’ll help us better serve you — and if you are selected — you’ll also be working alongside us to help make Mississippi a better place for all.

The post Hello, Mississippi! appeared first on Mississippi Today.

FEBRUARY 20, 2017

On Good Morning America, the actresses from the 2016 film Hidden Figures honored another hidden figure — trailblazing engineer Raye Montague. 

When she was 7 and visited a captured Nazi mini-submarine in Little Rock, Arkansas, she saw the dials and was mesmerized. In 1956, she began working for the U.S. Navy as a clerk typist and quickly became more, learning engineering skills at work and computer programming at night school. She became the first female programmer of ships there and a computer systems analyst at the Naval Ship Engineering Center, creating the first computer generated rough draft of a Navy ship, the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate. 

She also served as program director at Naval Seas System Command and was honored with the Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1972. During her career, she not only taught at the U.S. Naval Academy, she briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff each month. Many of her ship designs continue to be used. 

In 2017, the Naval Surface Warfare Center honored her. “I didn’t realize that I was breaking glass ceilings back then,” she told those gathered. “I was just doing what had to be done.” She died in 2018 at the age of 83.

The post On this day in 2017 appeared first on Mississippi Today.