OurTupelo

Unserved 1955 warrant for Carolyn Bryant Donham’s arrest in Emmett Till case found.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Speedy Justice? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Multiple states, ranging from true blue California to deep red South Carolina, are using their sizable growth in revenue collections to return money directly to the taxpayers this year.

Like most other states, Mississippi is experiencing sizable, even unprecedented revenue growth. But the Mississippi Legislature and Gov. Tate Reeves opted to not return any of that revenue growth to the citizens this year.

California is returning up to $1,050 on a sliding scale with high wage earners receiving less or nothing at all based on their income levels. But under the California program, a married couple earning $150,000 or less with at least one dependent will receive the full $1,050. California is also using the surplus funds to provide rental assistance. South Carolina is providing up to $800 and Maine is providing up to $1,700 for couples earning less than $200,000.

In total 14 states have doled out some type of stimulus or rebate, and many others are pondering such a move. Many states are saying they are providing the funds to help with the high price of gasoline.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves recently touted on social media that effective July 1 the largest tax cut in Mississippi history would go into effect. Technically it did. The last line of House Bill 531, known as the Mississippi Tax Freedom Act and authored by Speaker Philip Gunn, says the legislation goes into effect July 1, 2022.

But in actuality, the text of the bill reveals that Mississippi taxpayers do not reap any financial benefits from the legislation until 2023 — nothing for the current calendar year.

Starting Jan. 1, 2023, the 4% tax on the first $5,000 of taxable income will be eliminated. That means starting in January, Mississippi workers should receive a little extra in their paychecks, or alternatively, workers will receive the benefit of the tax cut when they file their taxes for 2023 sometime before April 15, 2024.

According to the Tax Foundation, the elimination of the 4% bracket will save Mississippi taxpayers up to $200 in calendar year 2023.

In addition, with the elimination of the 4% bracket, Mississippians will not be taxed on their first $18,000 for a single filer and the first $36,000 for a married couple. When the tax cut is fully enacted in 2026, a married couple earning $80,000 annually will save $834 in state taxes while a single person earning $40,000 will save $417.

State Sen. Derrick Simmons, D-Greenville, citing data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said of the Mississippi tax cut: “Once fully implemented, only 37% of the tax cut will go to Mississippians earning, on average, $90,000 and less. In other words, nearly two-thirds of the savings from the tax cut will go to the wealthiest 20% of earners.”

Many states opted to take its surplus funds and give a more immediate, one-time benefit. They opted not to provide permanent tax relief until seeing how the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing inflation would impact the economy over a longer period. They did not want to take funds out of state coffers on a yearly basis until they knew more about whether an economic downturn would severely curtail those unprecedented revenue collections.

Some states opted to provide a combination of immediate rebates and a more modest permanent tax cut.

Mississippi leaders chose to eschew immediate relief for a permanent tax cut that when fully enacted will take about $525 million annually out of the roughly $7 billion revenue stream.

At one point this year, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and some senators proposed a combination of a tax cut and a rebate for 2022, but that proposal did not survive.

Instead of providing rebates this year, the Legislature and governor in the 2022 session opted to spend Mississippi’s $1.1 billion in surplus money providing funds for literally hundreds of projects throughout the state. These included enhancing local and state government infrastructure, tourism projects and for various other items.

In total, the Legislature appropriated about $956 million of those $1.1 billion in surplus funds on those projects and on specific needs for state agencies, leaving about $150 million in surplus funds in what is known as the capital expense fund.

The good news for the state and its citizens is that there will likely be another roughly $1.3 billion in surplus funds for the Legislature in 2023 based on the continued strong surge in revenue collections.

Stay tuned for the 2023 session to see how those funds are spent.

The post Many states used surpluses to give taxpayers a rebate. Not Mississippi. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Frank Dungan of Madison needs a liver transplant, but the focus of his past few months has not been his health. His focus has been a battle between his insurance company and his hospital that left him without insurance coverage at the state’s only organ transplant program.

But as of July 1, Dungan has switched insurers, and he’s getting the medical care he’s had to put off – and, most importantly, is back to “active” status on the transplant list.

After Dungan’s hospital, the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), went out of network with his insurer Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi on April 1, Dungan spent months trying to get answers about what that meant for him. UMMC marked him as “inactive” on their transplant list, meaning if the perfect liver match became available, he wouldn’t get a call. 

Blue Cross directed him to the transplant program in Memphis, which was over three hours away from his home, a logistical and financial nightmare. He knew very little about the program, and he had spent years building relationships with his doctors at UMMC, which houses the state’s only transplant program. 

Neither Blue Cross nor UMMC would get him answers about what the out-of-pocket costs would be if he got the transplant through UMMC while it was still out of network with Blue Cross. In May, Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney stepped in and sent a letter to both the insurer and UMMC asking they provide him with what he needs. 

But Dungan said he couldn’t get definitive answers and never received anything in writing. 

“It was to the point it would drive you crazy. Every time the phone rang, you were trying to figure out what other freaking problem we had,” he said. 

UMMC and Blue Cross had agreed to mediation to try and settle the contract dispute, but more than two months after the hospital went out of network, a resolution still seems unlikely. Neither UMMC nor Blue Cross will speak publicly about how the negotiations are going.

The dispute stems from disagreements over reimbursement rates, with UMMC insisting Blue Cross is not fairly reimbursing the safety net hospital for its services and Blue Cross maintaining rate hikes would necessitate a substantial increase in member premiums. The hospital’s reimbursement rates are not public record.

In June, when squeezing in his appointments with various specialists before the continuity of care grace period expired for certain Blue Cross members at UMMC on July 1, one of his doctors found something concerning. He had esophageal varices, a condition that requires a medical procedure that uses elastic bands to tie off bleeding veins. If untreated, the varices can rupture and cause severe internal bleeding.

The condition commonly occurs in people with serious liver disease. 

Dungan said his UMMC doctor told him the banding procedure would be “on my dime.” 

Dungan was scared. He worried when going to bed each night if it would be the night he’d bleed out. He knew something had to change.

“I found a (Marketplace) insurance adviser and asked them if there were options (for me) … See, my insurance agent in my hometown had told me you can’t get health insurance except in December, even he gave me erroneous information,” said Dungan. “I was concerned about that, concerned about premiums, concerned about the language … I didn’t understand some of the language (of the policies).” 

He connected with an insurance broker trained in federal Marketplace plans and found out he did not have to wait until December to sign up for a plan. 

“She walked me through the specifics of the policy, and I found it covered what I needed,” he said. “She explained the deductible, the out of pocket, and the premium, everything.”

Dungan, who had an individual policy with Blue Cross, is now covered by Ambetter, which offers health care plans on the federal Marketplace and is accepted by UMMC. He underwent two procedures to address the esophageal varices earlier this month and has visited his dentist to ensure he does not have any infections in his mouth – a requirement for reclaiming his spot on the transplant list.   

Switching insurances is not an option for some people, especially those whose employers only offer Blue Cross to employees.

But he’s starting from square one with his insurance: he has a new out-of-pocket limit to meet of around $8,000. But his monthly premium dropped from almost $1,200 with Blue Cross to $402 with Ambetter, he said. 

“I’m back confident that I’m getting good health care and confident that my bills are not going to be outrageous,” said Dungan. “I’m confident (the UMMC doctors) are keeping an eye on me.” 

The post In need of immediate care, liver transplant candidate drops Blue Cross for Marketplace insurance appeared first on Mississippi Today.

After blowback from House Republicans, Speaker Philip Gunn and Speaker Pro Tem Jason White have backed out of hosting a fundraiser for former Democratic Rep. Shanda Yates, now an independent.

Gunn and White wrote a mea culpa to the House GOP caucus on Thursday. In their memo, they said, “We believe she is considering joining our party and hope she will,” and said they agreed to help with her fundraiser in an effort to get her to join the Republican Party. They said Yates has “voted with Republicans a large portion of the time, which got her kicked out of the Democratic Party.”

But Gunn and White participating in the fundraiser rankled many Republican House members, who said Yates still votes often with Democrats and is backed by some liberal groups. In their memo, the GOP House leaders acknowledged, “Shanda certainly has some liberal ideas and has cast some liberal votes.”

“In hindsight, as your elected Speaker and Pro Tem, we should not have agreed to host the reception unless she switched party affiliation,” Gunn and White wrote. “… because of the reservations expressed by us to many of you, we have informed Shanda that we will not be able to go forward with hosting or attending any reception for a candidate who is not the member of the Republican Party.”

READ MORE: Mississippi Democrats lost a promising up-and-comer in Rep. Shanda Yates. Now what?

Yates on Friday did not immediately respond to a request for comment and question of whether she is considering a switch to Republican.

Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven, on social media on Thursday blasted Gunn and White for planning to host the fundraiser and wrote, “The world has turned upside down!”

“The Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Pro-Tem raising money for the most liberal members of the House,” Currie wrote. “She voted against pro-life abortion bills and the Fairness Act which keeps males out of female sports … The Speaker has informed lobbyist (sic) to send money to him and not legislators so we are able to run for re-election and he will decide how and who the money will be spent on. I guess this is his pick.”

Members of the Mississippi Freedom Caucus, which includes a small group of conservative House members, issued a press release Thursday calling on “Gunn and White to disavow liberal Shanda Yates.”

“Yates, who beat out a longtime Republican Bill Denny, ran under a far-left progressive platform,” the release said. “… During her time in the Legislature, Yates has authored bill to remove the prohibition on same-sex marriage, allow gay couples to adopt children, allow for early voting and online voter registration and several bills to expand Medicaid … This is certainly a new low for the Republican leadership in the Mississippi Legislature to help fundraise for a legislator that holds such extreme liberal views.”

The release also described White, seen as longtime Speaker Gunn’s heir apparent, as “former-Democrat turned Republican Speaker Pro Tem Jason White.” White was first elected to the House as a Democrat in 2011, but switched to Republican in late 2012 and has been a top lieutenant on Gunn’s GOP leadership team.

Yates of Jackson is in her first term representing the District 64 House seat, taking office in 2020. In January, Yates announced she was switching to independent because “members of my own caucus and party made it clear that I was not wanted within the Democratic Party.”

The post After Republicans complain, Speaker Gunn withdraws from fundraiser for former Democrat Shanda Yates appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Tate TV appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A combination of an ammonia leak and improper water treatment has forced all of Jackson’s water customers to boil their water for nearly two weeks straight now. Those boil water notices came only days after the city asked residents to conserve what water they were using because of hotter than average weather. 

City of Jackson officials on Thursday did not have a definitive timeline for lifting the boil water notice, but said the service may be back to fully functioning as early as Friday for well system customers, and as early as Saturday for surface system customers. 

Officials issued the first citywide notice on June 24, after an ammonia leak as well as filtration issues at the O.B. Curtis water treatment plant forced operators to reduce pressure. While the pressure has been restored, Jackson is still working to answer a second citywide notice that the state health department issued on June 30. 

The Mississippi State Department of Health issued the notice because “turbidity levels,” or cloudiness, in the water were too high. Turbidity itself isn’t harmful, but high levels mean a higher likelihood of disease-causing organisms, which can lead to symptoms such as nausea, cramps, diarrhea, and associated headaches, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. 

City officials explained on Thursday that operators use two chemicals to maintain the pH in the water: soda ash and a lime slurry. At the time, the soda ash operation “was not working,” and operators used too much lime in the treatment, causing the high turbidity.

Jackson residents have now received over 50 boil water notices since the start of 2022, according to the city’s press releases. Only the two recent notices covered the whole city. 

On June 21, the city issued a water conservation advisory because of expected hotter than average temperatures this summer, asking residents to take showers instead of baths, only run full loads in dishwashers and laundry machines, among other measures.

The city requires a number of fixes to bring the system as a whole up to par: hiring more operators for its two treatment plants, upgrading equipment at the plants, and replacing aging distribution lines.  

In May, Jackson announced the construction of a new 48-inch distribution line, using about $8 million of the city’s American Rescue Plan Act funds, was underway. The new line is aimed at improving water pressure in the South Jackson, Belhaven, Belhaven Heights, Eastern downtown and I-55 south corridor neighborhoods.

In total, the city has allocated $25 million of the ARPA funds it received for water and sewer improvements. But through county and matching funds the city could receive an additional $33 million, the Clarion Ledger reported in April. 

The city said it plans to distribute bottles of water to residents every day until the boil water notice is lifted. 

The notices advise that residents bring their water to a boil for a minute before drinking as well as: cooking or baking, making ice cubes, taking medication, brushing teeth, washing food, mixing baby formula or food, mixing juices or drinks, feeding pets, washing dishes and all other consumption.

This story was produced by Mississippi Today in partnership with the Community Foundation for Mississippi’s local news collaborative, which is independently funded in part by Microsoft Corp. The collaborative includes Mississippi Today, the Clarion Ledger, the Jackson Advocate, Jackson State University, Mississippi Public Broadcasting and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting.

The post Boil and conserve: Treatment issues and hot weather put strain on Jackson water appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which was the state’s only abortion clinic before it was forced to close Thursday, is asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to allow it to reopen next week.

The request is based on the state Supreme Court’s 1998 decision that said the Mississippi Constitution provided women the right to an abortion. That decision has not been overturned and supersedes laws passed by the Legislature banning abortion in most instances, attorneys for the abortion clinic argue.

The petition filed Thursday with the Supreme Court comes on the heels of Tuesday’s ruling by Chancery Judge Debbra Halford of Franklin County refusing a request for a temporary restraining order allowing the clinic to remain open.

The filing before the Supreme Court noted that Halford opened the hearing on Tuesday with a prayer by a specially-appointed chaplain: “Lord, we pray for the presence of your Holy Spirit in this courtroom today … We seek your truth, not our own. We seek your wisdom, not our own. Bless and inspire Judge Halford in her deliberations and judgments here today.”

The abortion rights supporters are asking the Court to suspend two laws. Mississippi has a trigger law that went into effect based on the U.S. Supreme Court landmark ruling in late June overturning Roe v. Wade, which had recognized abortion rights in the U.S. Constitution.

Another law in Mississippi banning abortions after six weeks also went into effect as a result of the overturning of Roe.

“We hope the Mississippi Supreme Court will abide by its prior ruling that the Mississippi Constitution protects the rights of women to make their own decisions in matters of child birth. But unfortunately, we live in a time when settled rules of law are being cast aside. We hope that doesn’t happen here,” said Jackson attorney Rob McDuff, of the Mississippi Center for Justice, who is representing the clinic. The Center for Reproductive Rights also is representing the clinic.

McDuff argued before Halford that those laws would be trumped by the 1998 state Supreme Court ruling saying abortion rights were protected under the Mississippi Constitution. Only the state Supreme Court could reverse that opinion just as only the U.S. Supreme Court could reverse the Roe decision, McDuff argued Tuesday before Halford.

Halford rejected McDuff’s argument, refusing to grant the temporary restraining order because, she said, it was likely that the state Supreme Court would reverse the 1998 ruling.

In the filing before the Supreme Court, the clinic said Halford “abused her discretion” by basing her ruling on what she believed the Supreme Court would do.

“That reasoning is contrary to the rule of law and to this Court’s authority to have the final word on the meaning of the Mississippi Constitution,” the filing said.

The office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch argued against suspending the enactment of the trigger law and the six-week ban. Fitch also filed the lawsuit – Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – that led to the Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

Fitch’s office argued before Halford that the 1998 ruling by the state’s highest court was made based on the fact Roe was national law. Now that Roe has been overturned, the 1998 state Supreme Court ruling is no longer good law. But McDuff pointed out nowhere in the 1998 ruling was that connection made.

The trigger law bans all abortions except in cases where the life of the mother is at risk or in cases of law enforcement-reported rapes. The other law bans abortions after six weeks except in cases of medical emergencies.

“We are simply asking the MS Supreme Court to uphold its own ruling. It would be a mistake to reverse decades of precedent and allow government and politics to override a woman’s right to make health decisions directly impacting her life,” said Vangela Wade, chief executive officer of the Mississippi Center for Justice.

Vangela Wade is a Mississippi Today board member.

The post Mississippi’s just-closed abortion clinic asks state’s highest court to allow it to reopen appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Gifted actor James Caan died today at the age of 82, leaving behind a remarkable list of memorable characters he played on the big screen and television. Yes, and today, upon hearing the news, I feel a good bit older.

Younger viewers likely will remember Jimmy Caan from playing Will Farrell’s daddy in “Elf.” His most famous role, surely, was that of Sonny Corleone in “The Godfather,” perhaps the greatest movie ever made.

But I will always remember him best for his role as Chicago Bears football player Brian Piccolo in “Brian’s Song.” There’s a story there. Today, I’d like to tell it.

“Brian’s Song” came out on television in 1971. It was the ABC Movie of the Week, and it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. I was 18, trying my best to become a man. I watched with my brother Bobby and my mother on the console TV in the den of our Hattiesburg home.

I wasn’t expecting much, to tell you the truth. TV movies usually weren’t especially good in those days. I didn’t know much about Caan’s work, and Billy Dee Williams, his co-star, was yet to become as widely known as “Brian’s Song” would make him.

I loosely knew the story before watching the movie. I knew that Sayers was one of the greatest football players I had ever witnessed. I knew that he and Piccolo had been Bears teammates in the same backfield. I knew Piccolo had died. There was so much I did not know.

So we watched and the film not only drew us in, but gripped us and gripped us tightly. The late William Blinn’s award-winning script was powerful. But it was the acting — Caan’s Piccolo, Williams’ Gale Sayers and Jack Warden’s George Halas — that made the film so compelling. 

Blinn’s script won an Emmy. Warden won a Peabody Award for best supporting actor. Caan and Williams were both nominated in the best leading actor category. Neither won, and I am not sure how you would have awarded one over the other. Both were terrific.

You probably know the story: Piccolo and Sayers are teammates, Sayers by far the more talented of the two. They become friends. Sayers, a generational athlete, is injured and Piccolo takes his place in the lineup and is the star of a huge Bears’ victory. Meanwhile, Piccolo helps Sayers in his recovery, even challenging him in a race in which Sayers stumbles, but still wins. Piccolo switches positions to fullback and becomes a starter in the same Bears backfield as Sayers.

But then Piccolo begins to lose weight and his performance declines. He is diagnosed with cancer, loses a lung and eventually his life. There are so many poignant scenes filled with pathos and often humor.

Sayers and the Bears are about to play a huge game while the critically ill Piccolo is hospitalized. Sayers challenges the team to win the game for Piccolo, a feat they can’t quite pull off. When the players visit the hospital afterward, Piccolo teases them that the line in the old Ronald Reagan movie wasn’t, “Let’s lose one for the Gipper.”

By then, we were laughing through watery eyes. Then came the scene in which Sayers, being presented the Halas Award as the Bears’ most courageous player, tells the crowd they have chosen the wrong player, that he was accepting for his friend, Brian Piccolo. “I love Brian Piccolo,” Sayers says, struggling for the words, “and I’d like all of you to love him, too. And tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him.”

By then, the three of us were sobbing, Mama openly while Bobby and I tried to hide our emotions, which neither of us did very well.

A day or two later, our good pal Tim Floyd, the future famous basketball coach, was visiting and Mama told him about the movie and about how Bobby and I cried like babies. Tim laughed and laughed and said something like, “Real men don’t cry.”

Flash forward a few months to the next summer. The re-runs are on and “Brian’s Song” is playing again on the TV in our den. This time, Floyd, future coach of the Chicago Bulls and New Orleans Hornets, has joined us to watch. I made sure of that.

We get toward the end of the movie. Billy Dee WIlliams is making his speech. Mama, Bobby and I hear a muffled sob from across the room. We look. Tim has his head buried in one of the pillows on our couch.

My mama, bless her heart, gets the points for what she said during the closing credits: “Timmy Floyd, what was that you said last year about real men?…”

The post Remembering James Caan, ‘Brian’s Song’ and coming of age appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The clinic – a box perched on wheels and painted with trees and people – sat in the gravel and grass parking lot of a burger and wings joint called VNV Sports Bar and Grill, the only restaurant in Metcalfe, Mississippi. Choosing where to park it in this Delta town of about 1,000 people had not been difficult.

“It’s the main strip in Metcalfe,” said Antoinette Roby, a community health worker and driver at Plan A. The mobile clinic offers pap smears and mammograms, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and COVID-19 vaccines, contraceptives and blood pressure tests– all for free.

Since April 2021, Roby and her colleague Juliet Thomas have criss-crossed the Delta in the clinic, aiming to expand access to primary and reproductive health care in a region where many people hear “clinic” and assume they can’t afford to step inside. 

Mississippi has one of the highest rates of uninsured people in the nation, a statistic exacerbated by state leaders’ refusal to expand Medicaid. About 20% of adults in Washington County, where Metcalfe is located, don’t have health insurance.  

Family planning is a key part of the clinic’s work, as they counsel patients – especially women – on contraceptive methods and field questions about fertility and pregnancy. And now, with the end of legal abortion in Mississippi, the stakes of that work are rising.

“It’s not going to interrupt what we do,” Thomas said of the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which means abortion will be illegal in almost all cases in Mississippi. But it does spotlight the dire need for contraceptives, pregnancy-related care, and primary care in the poorest part of the poorest country in the United States. 

After the leak of the draft opinion showing the U.S. Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe, Plan A announced plans to distribute emergency contraception and take-home pregnancy tests to patients. The clinic is also adding ultrasounds and pregnancy- and miscarriage-related services. 

“Mississippi has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the country, and banning abortion will lead to an increase in high-risk pregnancies with no plans to reduce the barriers to care faced by pregnant people,” the clinic said in a press release in May. “Plan A will help to fill that gap.”

In the wake of the overturning of Roe, Republican leaders in Mississippi are touting a “new pro-life agenda.” The leaders of the state House and Senate have established committees to recommend plans to help mothers, children and families. 

They have mentioned trying to improve the state’s abysmal foster care, which is the subject of a federal lawsuit, and child support systems. But they have avoided endorsing measures like Medicaid expansion that would make comprehensive health care more affordable and accessible for Mississippians, and that doctors say would make moms, babies and families healthier. Last year the Legislature refused to extend Medicaid coverage for new moms, even as other conservative Deep South states did so.

Attorney General Lynn Fitch, Gov. Tate Reeves, and Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, have all described the state’s “pregnancy resource centers” as a key way to support pregnant women and new moms. The centers offer ultrasounds and pregnancy tests but generally no other medical services and are not regulated by the health department. And there are only a handful in the Delta; the closest one to Metcalfe is in Cleveland, a 45-minute drive away. 

While state leaders hold press conferences celebrating the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Roby and Thomas keep seeing their patients. 

Metcalfe is a regular stop on their rotation through the Delta: They visit every fourth Tuesday, rain or shine, at the invitation of Rev. Arthur Thomas, head of the town’s Mayoral Health Council.

On a Tuesday afternoon, Arthur Thomas sat inside Metcalfe’s City Hall, a squat brick building, working the polls for a runoff primary election in which no one so far had voted. Thomas said he had wanted the mobile unit to come to Metcalfe because many residents are low-income, and medical facilities in Greenville aren’t accessible without a car.  

“It should be a right for everyone to have it,” Thomas said of health care. “But everyone can’t have it, and that’s where Plan A clinic comes in.”

When Caroline Weinberg – a New Yorker with an M.D. and a background in public health – first conceived of Plan A, the goal was to help meet needs for family planning care in rural, underserved communities.

Mississippi has one of the country’s highest rates of unplanned pregnancy. In 2020, it claimed the highest rate of teen pregnancy. The state has the highest infant mortality rate in the country. It also has a high overall maternal mortality rate, and Black Mississippians are nearly three times likelier than white Mississippians to die of a pregnancy-related complication. 

For years, the state’s federally funded family planning offerings have fallen short. Until early 2022, the state health department got the grant to administer the program and used it to provide services at the county health departments. A report commissioned by the department to evaluate its own work found serious problems: Long wait times for appointments, inaccurate information about payment, clinics running out of condoms, and patients being told that they couldn’t choose what contraceptive method they got because “it is up to what the doctor wants.”

Just as reproductive health can’t be separated from health care more generally, barriers to accessing family planning are often the same reasons people struggle to get care at all. 

Mississippi has one of the country’s highest rates of people who lack health insurance, at about 12%. The state ranks 49th in primary care doctors per capita, and a 2019 report found that about half of the state’s rural hospitals were at risk of closing. And while Washington County is home to four OB/GYNs, many Delta counties have none. 

“We’ve fallen into this trap of making it seem like women’s health is a specialty,” Weinberg said. “That’s part of the issue of rural health care – it’s like, ‘Go talk to your lady doctor about that issue.’ If it’s hard for you to get to the doctor, there’s no reason that everybody shouldn’t be talking about this.”

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So while providing reproductive health care is a priority, Plan A offers as many services as it can. Staff check blood pressure and blood sugar, test for HIV, perform mammograms and pap smears, and provide referrals to providers whose services are as close to free as possible. It costs about $700,000 to run the clinic in Mississippi each year. In the first five months of 2022, the clinic saw 642 patients. 

“They come in for one thing, we end up treating them for a whole lot of different things,” Thomas said. “They come in for blood pressure or blood sugar. Then when they start talking, they’re talking about, my feet are swelling, my back hurting. So we have our nurse practitioner come in and go a little bit further.”

About 75% of their patients do not have health insurance. 

Roby and Thomas are both Delta natives: Thomas of Greenville, right next to Metcalfe, and Roby of Isola, about an hour away. 

The daughter of a teacher and a parks commissioner, Thomas always wanted to stay in the Delta. She worked for the federal government for 15 years.

“I kind of worked my way through the Delta and saw a lot of the problems we have through no fault of the people here,” she said. “A lot of times the trust comes into play – everybody wants to study the Mississippi Delta and everything that goes on, but once the money is gone, people are just left with what they had already.”

Roby initially applied to Plan A as a driver and now serves as a community health worker, too. She spends her free time riding with a motorcycle club; in Metcalfe, she wore a T-shirt from a rally in Perry, Georgia. 

Their 230-square-foot mobile clinic consists of two exam rooms, a small bathroom, and a lab space with a minifridge. The walls are decorated with photographs of Delta scenes: cypress lakes and wind-swept fields. The space is efficient, with drawers under the exam tables labeled to indicate they hold patient gowns and speculums. It smells like the citrus disinfectant Thomas and Roby use to wipe everything down at the start and end of each day. 

When patients arrive, they climb the stairs to the unit and pick up an intake form listing the clinic’s services. 

In Metcalfe, some people take their clipboard over to the grocery store next door to stand in the air conditioning while they fill out the paperwork.

At Frank’s Quick Stop, in business for 37 years, the counter is stacked with pink pickled eggs, pickled pigs’ feet and hot dill pickles. There used to be other places to buy snacks and some groceries in town, but they didn’t last, and now Frank’s is referred to in Metcalfe as “the store.” All day, people walk in and out to chat and buy cold drinks or a $5.89 fish sandwich. 

Talk turns to the Delta’s troubles. The region’s population has been falling for decades. Washington County, for example, has lost a third of its residents since 1990. Factories have closed. There are few jobs. 

Frank’s was once featured in an Associated Press article about the Delta culinary phenomenon of Kool-Aid pickles, and a print now hangs by the door. The lead photograph shows a young woman, the owner’s niece, smiling behind the counter at Frank’s. She has since moved away. 

Metcalfe Alderwoman Etta Christon Washington, whose brother owns VNV Sports Grill, believes her hometown has become less self-sufficient than when she was born in 1964. The Delta can’t depend on the government, she says: Too much red tape, and in recent years the health department closed two of its three clinics in the county. 

She describes herself as a resource center, always on the lookout for opportunities to meet needs in Metcalfe, from food to transportation. Plan A is one of those opportunities. 

“I was surprised, because I had no idea that there was such services … I had no idea that you could do pap smears and everything on the mobile clinic,” Washington said of the first time she learned about Plan A. “It was mind blowing.”

Down the block from Plan A and Frank’s, 48-year-old Beverly Peterson sat outside her home with a few relatives, sipping sodas in the shade. Everyone had some experience with the clinic, whether they’d gotten a COVID vaccine a few months earlier or, in Peterson’s case, a free mammogram.

Without the mobile clinic, she said, “I probably wouldn’t have taken one, because I couldn’t afford it.”

Peterson, a lifelong resident of Metcalfe, was on Medicaid until her daughter turned 18 about four years ago. Since then, she has gone to the doctor every six months, paying $50 out of pocket to get her thyroid checked, because she knows if she doesn’t, the potential consequences are serious. 

Oher needs go unmet. Her anxiety medication isn’t expensive, but the quick doctor’s visit to get the prescription is a cost she can’t justify, so she’s gone without it for months now.

“If I’m not just really hurting, hurting, I get something over the counter,” she said. “After I got off Medicaid, I just stopped going to the doctor.”

She was grateful for Plan A, but it wasn’t a complete solution. Peterson was trying to figure out how she was going to come up with the money to get a tooth pulled. 

“Put some dentists in there,” she said. “They need a dentist.”

Thomas and Desiree Norwood, Plan A program coordinator and the mayor of Sunflower, said they’ve talked about adding dental and mental health services.

“There’s always going to be more,” Norwood said. 

At 5:48 p.m., nearly an hour after the clinic was supposed to close, Roby and Thomas came outside to walk a patient to her car. A regular at Plan A, she had called to find out where they would be. She made it to Metcalfe a little after 5 p.m., but Roby and Thomas didn’t think of turning her away. 

“If they see those stairs, they come up,” Thomas said. “If they come, we’ve got to  see ‘em.”

“For instance, here – we won’t be back for another month,” Roby said. “What if their blood pressure is up?”

It’s not uncommon for the Plan A staff to check someone’s blood pressure and send them directly to the emergency room because they’re at risk of a heart attack. 

With this patient, they had taken their time “educating and talking,” as Roby put it. It’s common for patients to need more than medical services, and Roby and Thomas are happy to connect them with resources and information, like how to call for free transportation as a Medicaid enrollee. They sometimes give patients their personal cell phone numbers so they can call with questions. 

By the time they left Metcalfe, they had seen nine patients and provided every service they offer except for mammograms – a good day, Thomas and Roby agreed.

When the clinic launched in 2021, Plan A staff spent a lot of time meeting with local leaders and trying to find the “movers and shakers” in each Delta town who could help them build relationships. That’s still a key part of their work, but things have changed. 

“Last year, we were calling, calling, calling,” Thomas said. “This year, they’re calling us.”

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Last week’s news that Southern Cal and UCLA are joining the Big Ten Conference caused jaws to drop and alarm bells to ring across college athletics. 

But not here.

My reaction? Of course USC and UCLA are joining the Big Ten. Makes as much sense as most anything else that is happening these days in the college sports world. Think about it: USC and UCLA are joining the Big Ten, which is actually the Big Fourteen and hasn’t been the Big Ten since 1990 when Penn State became the 11th team in the Big Ten. Now, the Big Ten will actually be the Big Sixteen until the next shoes (probably Oregon and Washington) drop.

This is a college sports world gone mad. Geography doesn’t matter. Dollars do. Actually, dollars are all that do.

Southern Cal and UCLA are traveling across the continent to join the Big Ten because it means more money. TV pays the bills and the Big Ten TV package becomes millions upon millions more lucrative when the California market is added.

Never mind that UCLA and Southern Cal athletes will now spend about as much time in airplanes as they do classrooms. College athletics long ago quit have anything to do with education. It’s about the dollar. Period.

At least the NFL, the money-making-est sports organization in the world, keeps geography in mind. That’s why we have in north, south, east and west divisions in both the NFC and the AFC. 

Only in college sports would you have Missouri in the Southeastern Conference’s Eastern Division, flying over Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama to play a division game in Florida.

Tradition used to matter in college sports. It doesn’t matter much now. Think about this: Southern Cal might soon be the visiting team in the Rose Bowl.

Or think about this: The UCLA gymnastics team could now be competing in a conference match against Rutgers 2,750 miles from home in Piscataway, N.J. The match could be on a Sunday at noon in New Jersey, which would be like 9 a.m. California time for the Bruins. Win or lose, it will be a long, long ride home. That Monday morning kinesiology class will require two alarm clocks.

And I wonder how the baseball and softball coaches at Southern Cal and UCLA feel about all this. That March road series at Michigan or Northwestern will require bigger suitcases and considerably more layering. Jet lag will be the least of the worries. It could be an even bigger problem for Michigan and Northwestern coaches when their teams play February or March conference games in L.A. Michigan and Northwestern players might not want to board the jet to take them back to their still frigid homes.

I do not want to sound like an old fogey about all this. But the Biblical verse — “For the Love of money is the root of all evil” — rarely has rung more true. I am not sure where college athletics is heading, but I don’t like the looks of much of any of it. That includes NIL and the one-time transfer rule.

We are fast reaching the point — or maybe we have reached it — where college coaches are going to recruit talent from other college teams as much as they do from high schools and junior colleges. And it is changing the way coaches coach. It used to be “my way or the highway.” Now, given that choice, the athlete likely will choose the highway — or, just as likely, a jet. The school just down the road or across the country might offer a better NIL deal.

Where does all this leave the Mississippi schools? Good question. Ole Miss and Mississippi State are grandfathered in to the SEC. That’s not going to change. But with the NIL and one-time transfer rule, winning in the SEC will not get any easier, especially not with Texas and Oklahoma presumably joining the SEC Western Division. Money may well be the root of all evil, but it does buy better players. And now that “buying” players is legal, the rich will only get richer.

Southern Miss has found a new home in the Sun Belt Conference, a league of like-minded schools that is more like a throwback in today’s world of college athletics. It is a regional league where buses will far outnumber airplanes. Yes, its talent pool will be raided from time to time by bigger conferences with bigger NIL deals. So it goes.

From time to time, Jackson State has entertained the thought of leaving the SWAC to move “up” in the college athletic world. Be careful, I say. I am not so sure whether up is up any more.

My question for the day: Could it be that the Ivy League had it right all along?

Seems to me, the answer is all too obvious.

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