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For the first time since the launch of a federal grant to expand reproductive health care decades ago, the state health department won’t be running the program in Mississippi. Instead, a nonprofit will.

For years, Jamie Bardwell and Danielle Lampton worked at the Mississippi Department of Health, learning how the state’s family planning programs worked– or didn’t. 

They left the Department in 2018 and founded Converge, a nonprofit focused on reproductive health. Their team conducted training for Mississippi health care providers and helped clinics learn how to affordably expand birth control offerings. 

Then, earlier this year, Converge beat out the health department to win a critical $4.5 million federal grant, called Title X, to provide family planning services around the state. 

Access to Title X-funded services in Mississippi has long been more theoretical than universal. Patients sometimes struggled to get through to clinics over the phone, even though the health department offered family planning services at almost every county health department. Wait times for appointments could be long. And most people wound up with less effective methods like the pill or male condoms, instead of long-acting IUDs or implants. 

In Mississippi, a majority of Title X patients are at or below the poverty line, and a majority are uninsured, according to federal data.

The consequences of poor access to care are clear: The majority of pregnancies in Mississippi are unplanned. The state has the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea of any state in the country, and the sixth-highest rate of HIV. 

Over the last decade, Converge’s cofounders say, they have learned Title X’s complicated rules and regulations and built relationships with providers and patients they hope will enable them to ensure every Mississippian has real access to high quality care. 

“It has taken us that long to be experts in this topic,” Bardwell said. “And it’s a topic and a subject area that there aren’t many people in Mississippi that are clamoring to be experts on.”

They plan to offer services at a smaller number of clinics than in the past, prioritizing areas with the highest need rather than the biggest population. Scott County, for example, is a target area because it has no federally qualified health center focused on serving people without health insurance. 

They also want to add telemedicine so people can get birth control prescriptions without having to make a trip to a clinic. 

“We see Converge as one of the primary drivers for change in how people get family planning care,” Lampton said. “And most importantly, in increasing how much family planning care is person-centered, by which we mean, care that is about the preferences, the desires, the values and needs of the patient.”

June Gipson, president and CEO of Open Arms Healthcare Center in Jackson, is cheering: Her clinic, which focuses on serving marginalized people, has been a Title X subgrantee for about five years, and she expects to see changes under Converge. 

“They care,” Gipson said of Converge’s co-founders, whom she has known for years. “They actually care about women.”

In other states, nonprofits are already running Title X programs. Every Body Texas has overseen the state’s now-$15.4 million grant since 2013. In Georgia, an FQHC has administered Title X since it beat out the state health department in 2014. 

Just after the change, the number of Georgians using Title X services fell from 115,000 to about 86,000. But by 2020, the program served 170,000 people–the largest number of patients in any year since 2006. 

In Georgia, state leadership said it was “deeply concerned with the federal government’s decision” when it lost Title X funding. In Mississippi, the health department is striking a different tone. 

State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs told Mississippi Today that reproductive health care has been transitioning away from county clinics for decades and that the department is “excited” that Converge will be able to expand partnerships with other providers. 

“We are working with Converge to ensure a seamless transition in service delivery,” he said.

He added that the department received an extension on previously unused grant funds that will allow the state clinics to operate for at least a year while Converge sets up its network. 

Many of the barriers to accessing reproductive health care in Mississippi are the same ones that limit access to all health care. Particularly in rural areas, there simply aren’t enough doctors and nurses. People without transportation may not be able to get to a pharmacy to pick up a birth control prescription. 

And if providers don’t want certain patients to have birth control, they don’t have to give it to her. 

“Title X alone is not going to solve all of the problems,” said Caroline Weinberg, the founder of Plan A, a mobile clinic focused on reproductive health care in the Delta. “But money helps everything.”

Since 1970, Title X has funded clinics around the country to ensure all Americans can access birth control and family planning services. Services can include birth control, sexually transmitted infection (STI) tests, breast and cervical cancer screening, basic infertility treatment and more. Patients with family incomes below the federal poverty line pay no fees for services, while others pay on a sliding scale. 

The health department has administered the program in Mississippi at least since the late 1970s, if not earlier, offering some level of services at nearly every county health department. It also distributed funds to eight subgrantees in 2021, mostly federally qualified health centers. 

But in 2018, even before the pandemic and Trump-era regulations battered Title X programs across the country, the program served only about 25,000 Mississippians, a small fraction of the state’s women of reproductive age. 

The health department commissioned Converge to assess the quality of its family planning services in 2019.  The report documented basic problems that had serious consequences for patients, as first reported by Erica Hensley for Rewire News Group and later obtained by Mississippi Today through a records request. 

Referring to the landscape of family planning care in Mississippi, Lampton said the state has ended up “with a broken system that gets an F.”

When patients called during working hours, the phone could ring with no response. Or the patient could be put on hold until the line would cut off. 

Staff gave incorrect information about service costs, saying things like “You will get a bill if you have no insurance” instead of explaining that fees vary by income and are waived for people below a certain income level. 

At the time, the health department required patients to come in for an exam before receiving a full supply of birth control. But it could take months to get an appointment. 

“In that time period a patient would go without birth control and possibly experience an unplanned pregnancy,” the report noted.

A study published in December 2021 by the Mississippi Reproductive Health Access Project at the University of Texas at Austin summarized findings from 498 “mystery client calls” to health department sites, federally qualified health centers and private practices. Sometimes clinic staff said patients couldn’t choose the type of birth control they’d receive. 

“It is up to what the doctor wants,” one caller was told. 

The Converge report found some clinics were running out of condoms. 

“Within any operation there will be anecdotal issues and opportunities to improve on standardization and customer service,” Dobbs said. “Staffing shortages have exacerbated issues no doubt. Having Converge as a partner will allow us to better focus our resources of specific need. We are also restructuring our oversight structure in counties to ensure better quality.” 

The COVID-19 pandemic caused family planning visits to health department sites to drop somewhat, but it was state policy that pushed a broken system closer to collapse.

Hensley reported for Rewire that Mississippi was one of at least four states to use an emergency rule to get federal authorization to divert Title X staff to COVID-19 response. Data provided by the health department shows the steepest decline in visits came nearly a year into the pandemic: Hensley reported the department had shifted staff to the vaccination rollout. 

From December 2020 to January 2021, total visits to health department sites fell 33%. The next month, they dropped another 45%. 

Visits ticked up again the rest of the year, but by the end of 2021, the number of family planning visits to county health departments had fallen by about 30% from 2020. 

Dobbs said the state’s “severely depleted” health workforce had been tasked with extraordinary duties, particularly early in the vaccine distribution effort. 

“These public health heroes worked countless overtime AND ensured TB, STIs and other challenges were addressed,” he said. “Although follow-up appointments were delayed, refills were maintained to ensure continuity of treatment.”

Wyconda Thomas opened Healthy Living Family Medical Center in Gunnison, a town of a few hundred people in Bolivar County, in 2018. The nurse practitioner grew up in Rosedale, eight miles away, and wanted to serve the community that raised her. 

She calls herself a one-stop shop, and her clinic motto is “Delivering quality care where it’s needed most.” The nearest hospital is 30 minutes away. 

“The ambulance service, it used to come to Rosedale two days a week,” she said. “So you had to pick which day you had a heart attack.”

These days, she doesn’t see the ambulance stationed in Rosedale at all. 

Thomas became a Title X subgrantee in 2021. In her first year, health department data shows, her clinic reported 426 family planning visits– more than all but two other sub-grantees and five county health departments that year. The $40,000 grant enabled her to add family planning services for the patients she was already seeing regularly. 

She also sees a lot of teenagers, and during their well child exams, she takes the opportunity to offer some basic information. 

“We also include the family planning of just education about their bodies, changes in their bodies, what their bodies are capable of, which is getting pregnant,” she said. “We discuss the different types of birth control if they’re interested in that. We talk about how to avoid pregnancy.”

Lack of access to care and lack of information are related. “People can’t know a lot about what they don’t have access to to begin with,” Tyler Harden, Mississippi state director at Planned Parenthood Southeast, said.

Thomas sees that link every day with her patients, who rely on her for information about their options, the potential side effects of different contraceptive methods, and her thoughts on what might work best for them. 

“If they don’t know something, it falls on me,” she said.

Converge leaders say they plan to actively promote services, rather than waiting for patients to find them. And they want to give patients information, too.

On Personally, the website Converge built to help patients find a clinic, users can search by services offered and payment types accepted. 

“We wanted patients to be able to see things before they even get to their visit,” said Jitoria Hunter, director of external affairs. “Like how to talk to your providers and looking at the different methods that they have access to.”

Nonprofits, community health clinics, hospital-based clinics and county health departments can apply to join the Title X network online, on a rolling basis. 

Current and prospective subgrantees are waiting to see what changes under Converge.  

Thomas said she would like to see more opportunities to attend trainings and conferences. 

“Just like resources where I could go and learn more to take back to my patients,” she said. 

Gipson expects Converge to be more responsive to subgrantees’ questions and suggestions. She hopes the program will offer less red tape and more support for innovations. 

Before joining Plan A as program coordinator, Desiree Norwood served as mayor of Sunflower in the Delta, and saw firsthand how people living in communities with few options for health care reacted to a visit from the mobile clinic. Plan A hopes to apply for and receive funding under Converge. 

Norwood said her understanding is that Converge “would fund small, innovative programs, such as Plan A, those programs that are rooted in the community.”

Converge is taking over Title X administration just as the Supreme Court looks set to overturn or substantially weaken Roe via a ruling in a Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. 

But in Mississippi, Roe didn’t fully protect abortion access anyway. Just one clinic remains open, down from 13 in 1982. 

Now, reproductive health advocates see an effort to blur the line between abortion and contraceptives: In Missouri, some Republicans have argued that IUDs are “abortifacients.” 

And the Title X program has already been a target in the past. In 2019, a Trump administration regulation prohibited grant recipients from referring patients for abortions, causing about a quarter of all sites to leave the Title X network. 

To be effective in the future, Converge may have to do more than expand access to good health care. The organization may also have to defend Mississippians’ right to birth control. 

“I think it’s really important that everyone knows that seeking family planning care at a Title X site is legal,” Lampton said. 

“If Roe is overturned, family planning care is probably next on the agenda,” Bardwell added. “It’s about reproductive autonomy. It’s not lost on us that we have to make sure people know, like Danielle said, this is health care. This is basic health care.”

The post A nonprofit beat the health department to win a key grant for family planning. Can it transform a broken system? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Gov. Tate Reeves on Thursday vetoed state spending recently passed by lawmakers for major upgrades to a Jackson park, the capital city’s planetarium and several other earmarks lawmakers made in a massive capital projects bill.

“Jackson is not one suburban golf course and one planetarium away from thriving,” Reeves said, adding the city should focus on its crumbling infrastructure and crime. “Until then, these projects would never be viable.”

Flush with federal pandemic stimulus cash and state surpluses largely generated from trillions in federal spending, the Legislature this year had billions extra to spend beyond its $7 billion general budget. Lawmakers directed money to hundreds of projects statewide.

Reeves has signed most of this spending into law, but in recent days has selectively used line-item vetoes to nix an handful of projects, including a $50 million hospital renovation at the University of Mississippi Medical Center with federal pandemic relief funds.

During a Thursday news conference, Reeves said his office made a “diligent, thorough” review of legislative spending and he used his veto stamp on items that were “not the most appropriate way to spend your hard-earned dollars.”

Reeves praised hundreds of millions of dollars legislators directed to water and sewerage projects, road and bridge work and other infrastructure “that sustains society.” He said they are sure to have a generational impact on the state. But he said spending on “golf courses, private pools … city and county office buildings” and $7.5 million earmarked for three private companies without going through the state’s incentives vetting process were untenable and “bad expenditures are bad expenditures.”

In a recent interview with Mississippi Today, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba had also criticized the state spending $13 million on a project that included the golf course. But he had also criticized the state not spending more on Jackson’s infrastructure needs.

Reeves said the state was willing to match Jackson’s water and sewer infrastructure spending, and criticized the city only putting up $25 million of the $42 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds it received for such work.

“I am very disappointed in how the city of Jackson and Hinds County have spent ARPA funds,” Reeves said. “… The only reason Jackson is only receiving $25 million (from the state) is because it only put up $25 million to match.”

The largest of the partial vetoes was the $13.25 million going for an ambitious LeFleur’s Bluff State Park upgrade that would develop a park, 10-hole golf course, bike and walking trails to connect museums in the area, such as the Mississippi Children’s Museum, the Sports Hall of Fame and Natural Science Museum, and develop various other recreational activities.

Reeves said he supported much of the project and hoped to work on developing it in the future, but he opposed the development of a golf course as part of the project. He said there are public golf courses already in the area, and the previous golf course at LeFleur’s Bluff State Park and courses and other state parks had not been successful.

“There are many parts of the project I can be supportive of, but the reopening of a golf course I cannot,” he said.

Reeves did not rule out placing the project on the agenda for any special session he has to call later this year for another issue. The governor has the authority to set the agenda for a special session. In the past, though, legislative leaders have taken up vetoes in special session even if there were not on the governor’s special session agenda.

The Legislature also would have the option to take up the vetoes at the start of the 2023 session. It takes a two-thirds majority of both chambers to override a veto.

Many of the items vetoed by the governor were for items in the city of Jackson.

Those Jackson vetoes in addition to the LeFleur’s Bluff project are:

• 250,000 for work at the Briarwood pool.
• $1 million for a parking lot at the Jackson Convention Center.
• $2 million for the city of Jackson planetarium.

Reeves said the planetarium is currently closed and questioned whether providing an additional $2 million would sustain the project.

In a statement, David Lewis, Jackson’s deputy commissioner of cultural affairs, said, “We are shocked and discouraged by the news about the governor vetoing the $2 million funding for the Planetarium. We are hoping to open a line of communication with the governor’s office to review our options.

“The Planetarium project is one that takes a beloved facility and brings it back to life for Mississippians to visit, be inspired by and to learn from. We know that our project will infuse STEM learning principles into our exhibits, bolster our growing tourism product by attracting national visitors, and strengthen the redeveloping downtown fabric in the Capital city.”

Other vetoes are:

• $1 million for golf course improvements at the Scenic River Development.
• $500,000 to the city of Greenvillle to develop green space next to the federal courthouse.
• $1 million to help with renovations of Pascagoula city offices.
• $50,000 for Arise and Shine Inc. in Copiah County.
• $200,000 to Summit Community Development Foundation.
• A combined $7 million for three companies.

In providing funds to the companies, Reeves said the Legislature bypassed the normal process of applying for funds for expansion projects with the Mississippi Development Authority and being vetted.

The vetoed items were part of a massive bill that totaled $223 million for projects throughout the state. Reeves said he approved near 90% of the projects that dealt with improvements to infrastructure and items that improved the quality of life. Multiple county courthouses received funds for renovations as did various museums and other projects throughout the state.

During the Thursday news conference Reeves said he wanted to stressed not the vetoed items, but the legislation signed into law that made a difference for the state in terms of primarily infrastructure improvement.

“We’re strengthening our roads, bolstering our bridges, and increasing access to clean drinking water,” Reeves said. “These investments will not only help us pave roads but pave the pathway to economic prosperity. By building better roads and constructing stronger bridges we give Mississippians the tools necessary to run their businesses, provide for their families, and get to work safely.”

The governor highlighted federal fund the state received to combat COVID-19 being used for water and sewer projects throughout the state. He also touted legislation he signed providing the Department of Transportation $1.43 billion, its largest appropriation ever. Reeves said the funds can be used, in part, to draw down federal funds that were part of the infrastructure package passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden.

While Reeves vetoed various items he described as “wasteful” spending, he said he allowed to become law without his signature the pay raise for state elected officials. The pay raise will go into effect in 2024 after the 2023 elections.

Reeves said he decided to approve the pay raise because of another state law that prevents employees of elected officials from earning more than the top elected official. He said that makes it difficult for some government officials to hire competent employees for some positions, like staff attorneys or financial advisers in the treasurer’s office.

Reeves said he intends to donate his raise to charity if he is reelected in 2023.

The post Gov. Tate Reeves blocks state funding for major Jackson park improvement, planetarium appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Two national organizations sent a joint letter Wednesday calling on the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees to roll back changes to its tenure policies after a Mississippi Today report. 

PEN America and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) — nonprofits that advocate for free speech in higher education — say the board’s revisions are “untenable” and “raise significant concerns under the First Amendment.” 

Mississippi Today first reported on the series of changes, which the board proposed without public input and adopted without discussion last week. The changes give university presidents, not IHL, the final say on granting tenure to faculty in Mississippi. 

The revised policies also contain new language that university presidents can use to determine whether to grant tenure, including a faculty member’s “collegiality,” “effectiveness, accuracy and integrity in communications,” and “contumacious conduct,” a factor that was previously only included in the board’s tenure dismissal policy. This new language was added to three of the board’s eight tenure policies: Promotions in rank, minimum standards for tenured employment, and post-tenure review.

PEN America and FIRE are most concerned about these latter changes, said Jeremy Young, PEN America’s senior manager of free expression and education. The letter says these new provisions are unclear and  “virtually certain to become a tool for sanitizing campuses of viewpoints with which university presidents disagree.” 

Tenure is a type of indefinite job protection that is unique to higher education, but essentially just means that faculty can’t be fired without cause. It is a way to ensure faculty members have academic freedom to, for example, publish research that could offend a powerful university donor without repercussions. 

The letter says that IHL’s new policies — specifically the inclusion of a “definition-less concept” like collegiality — are easy to misuse and could lead to presidents denying tenure to faculty they do not personally like. 

“This is a subjective requirement ripe for abuse and which, therefore, significantly threatens academic freedom,” the letter says. “These threats are not speculative. Faculty have been terminated, disciplined, or denied tenure under collegiality-type requirements simply for expressing unpopular viewpoints or criticizing their administrations.” 

PEN America and FIRE are also concerned these policies could infringe on faculty’s First Amendment Rights. If these changes hold, it’s likely faculty will start to self-censor their speech, especially online. 

The letter notes that, “in the university context, the Supreme Court has explained that “the mere dissemination of ideas — no matter how offensive to good taste — on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of ‘conventions of decency.’” 

The American Association of University Professors is also concerned about these changes, said Greg Scholtz, the director of the organization’s academic freedom department. 

In his role, Scholtz has reviewed hundreds of faculty handbooks, bylaws and collective bargaining agreements on college campuses. He called IHL’s policies, both the changes and existing standards, “a little unusual.” Specifically, Scholtz referenced an existing line in IHL’s promotions policy that evaluates faculty on “effectiveness in interpersonal relationships.” 

“This, for us, is quite objectionable,” Scholtz said. “I’ve never seen that before, but that suggests a niceness factor. I don’t know what to say, that’s odd.” 

The board did not notify faculty it was considering these policy changes, which it ultimately approved without discussion on the consent agenda at its meeting last week. 

Trustees did discuss the policies at a retreat in March, but that meeting was held at Mississippi State University’s Riley Center in Meridian, an hour-and-a-half away from the complex where the board typically meets in Jackson. Unlike most IHL meetings, the retreat was not live-streamed. 

Scholtz said the IHL board seems “to be accountable only to their political constituencies. They don’t seem to have a sense of being fiduciaries, of holding trust … which would also involve having some interest and concern for what the professionals in the system believe is good and necessary.”

PEN America and FIRE requested the IHL board provide a “substantive response” to the letter by May 11. 

The post Free speech organizations ask IHL to roll back ‘ripe for abuse’ tenure changes appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Gov. Tate Reeves announced Tuesday he had partially vetoed an appropriations bill for the University of Mississippi Medical Center, citing the state-owned hospital’s ongoing contract dispute with Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi.

Reeves’ partial veto of Senate Bill 3010 withholds $50 million of federal American Rescue Plan Act funding appropriated to UMMC by the state Legislature for the completion of capital improvements to the patient care facilities and operating suites of UMMC’s adult hospital.

The governor justified the veto by arguing that while UMMC’s teaching center is largely funded by the state, the hospital is not. He accused the hospital of “willingly” turning away patients on private insurance, a reference to UMMC’s contract dispute with Blue Cross that has resulted in the hospital going out of network with the insurer.

Though Blue Cross insurance is not currently accepted at UMMC, the hospital is not turning away patients covered by that insurer. Instead, those patients must pay for their care out of pocket, but at a discounted rate.

“There is little reason that Mississippi taxpayers should radically increase the commitment to further subsidize the operations of UMMC to the detriment of competitors,” Reeves said in a statement. 

READ MORE: Blue Cross, UMMC agree to mediation to settle contract dispute

UMMC officials declined to comment on what this loss of funding would mean for the planned improvements to the hospital. The hospital is receiving other ARPA funding for improvements to teaching facilities, including $55 million for its School of Nursing building. 

While the governor vetoed the appropriation for UMMC, which is tasked with treating many of the state’s uninsured, he did approve a $7 million appropriation for Gulfport Memorial Hospital.

The legislation, signed into law earlier this week by Reeves, provides $7 million to Gulfport Memorial for the pediatric multispecialty center on or near the hospital’s campus “in collaboration with University of Mississippi Medical Center and Gulf Coast Community College.”

UMMC is a public hospital owned by the state. Gulfport Memorial is a public not-for-profit hospital owned jointly by the city of Gulfport and Harrison County.

Reeves has publicly clashed with Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor of health affairs and medical school dean at UMMC, over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Kent Nicaud, the chief executive officer of Memorial Hospital of Gulfport, hosted a fundraiser at his home for the governor in the midst of a surge in the pandemic. At the time of the event, health care experts were urging caution during social gatherings as most hospitals in the state were filled to capacity.

Nicaud served on Reeves’ state finance committee for his 2019 gubernatorial campaign and has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the governor. Nicaud’s son has also been a significant campaign donor to Reeves.

The state constitution gives the governor partial veto authority, but that authority had been significantly limited by the courts in past rulings. In rulings going back to the 1800s, state courts had significantly limited the governor’s authority to veto portions of appropriations or spending bills until a 2020 Supreme Court decision.

The state Supreme Court had previously ruled that governors could not veto “the purposes or conditions” of appropriations bills. Instead, the governor had to veto entire sections of a bill, not just individual earmarks.

But in the landmark 2020 decision, with six of the nine justices concurring, the court reversed those previous decisions. The state’s highest court went a step further, with six of the nine justices saying that legislators did not have standing to challenge a governor’s partial veto in court.

This means it would be up to UMMC or the Institutions of Higher Learning to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the partial veto.

If the UMMC veto is not challenged, that $50 million will return to the state’s pool of ARPA funds, which the Legislature has until 2024 to appropriate. 

The 2020 partial veto also involved health care and another round of federal coronavirus-relief spending. In that instance, the governor vetoed a $2 million appropriation earmarked to then-shuttered North Oak Regional Medical Center in Tate County that it would receive should it reopen. He also scrapped a $6 million to a program designed to combat health care disparities in poor and minority communities.

Reeves also argued in his statement that building improvements are not the best way to spend $50 million in pandemic relief funding, citing a greater need of health care providers statewide for more staffing.

“That money would be better served in one of the programs that I recently signed to incentivize more training around the state for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals,” Reeves said. “After all, throughout COVID, we always had adequate bed capacity for patients. The central challenge was always the hospitals’ inability to properly staff the beds.” 

The governor’s claim that there were always enough beds for COVID-19 patients is inaccurate. While staffing shortages were, and are still, a major issue for hospitals statewide, capacity issues also emerged during the delta wave of the pandemic. 

UMMC had to construct two separate field hospitals in parking garages during the delta variant surge last August to handle patient overflow. 

Mississippi has lost more than 2,000 nurses over the course of the pandemic due to burnout or higher paying jobs in other states, often in travel nursing. Some of the state’s ARPA funding has been appropriated to help address this issue, including $40 million for nurse training at colleges and universities and $6 million for forgiving nurses student loans. 

Reporter Geoff Pender contributed to this report.

The post Gov. Tate Reeves vetoes $50M appropriation to UMMC appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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As the college baseball regular season enters its final month, it’s time to play buy and sell. As in, do you buy or sell No. 4 Southern Miss as a national seed in the NCAA Tournament? Does defending national champ Mississippi State make the NCAA field? Does Ole Miss, once No. 1, make the SEC Tournament? Does Mike Bianco return to coach next year? The Clevelands answer – or guess.

Stream all episodes here.

The post Podcast: College baseball, buy or sell appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Gov. Tate Reeves has allowed large pay raises for statewide elected officials — including the governor — to pass into law without his signature amid his vetoing a handful of other measures.

Starting in 2024, after the next election, Mississippi’s statewide elected officials will see pay increases ranging from $25,000 a year to $60,000 a year, or 22% to 67% increases. The governor’s salary will increase 31%, from $122,160 to $160,000. Lawmakers, with some debate, passed the salary increases at the end of this year’s legislative session. A proposal to raise legislators’ pay died.

Lawmakers this session passed a raise in teachers’ pay that averages $5,140, increasing starting teacher pay from $37,123 to $41,638.

Mississippi’s median household income is $45,081 a year — the lowest in the country.

The increases for statewide elected and other officials taking effect in 2024 are:

The lieutenant governor and House speaker’s salaries will increase from $60,000 a year to $85,000 a year under the new law.

Reeves did not comment on the pay raises. But in a social media post on why he vetoed lawmakers’ spending $50 million on upgrades at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Reeves said: “It is important to ensure that your money is invested wisely: based on creating value for you. This is the first of several spending vetoes that we will share and answer questions on in the coming days.”

The post Amid vetoes, Gov. Reeves lets pay raises for elected officials pass appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi and University of Mississippi Medical Center have agreed to utilize a mediation process to settle the contract dispute that has left the state’s largest hospital out of network with its largest insurer.

The decision comes after Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney sent them a letter on April 21 urging them to agree to mediation. The arbitration process involves bringing in an expert and impartial mediator who can preside over new contract negotiations. 

Chaney told Mississippi Today on Thursday that he’ll be providing several recommendations for prospective mediators by next week. 

Blue Cross and UMMC used the same mediation process to settle their last contract dispute in 2018, and it took around ten days to strike a deal, Chaney said. At that time, Blue Cross agreed to remove language that made the contract evergreen, meaning the insurance company could no longer change the contract terms at any time.

UMMC claims that between 2014 and 2017, Blue Cross made annual changes to their reimbursement rates that decreased the overall reimbursement UMMC received to care for Blue Cross patients.·UMMC received an overall 1% increase as part of the 2018 negotiations, but no changes have been made to their reimbursement rates since then.

After the two parties agree on who the mediator should be, a deadline will be set for them to settle their differences.  Chaney told Mississippi Today that the deadline will likely be  June 1 – 30 days before the end of the 90-day “continuity of care” period, where certain Blue Cross patients can still receive care at UMMC and have their insurance accepted. 

Under state agency rules, Chaney is not allowed to directly mediate or help settle disputes over contacts between insurance companies and health care providers.

Chaney’s involvement stems from concerns that UMMC not being in Blue Cross’ network runs afoul of state network adequacy regulations due to UMMC providing services that cannot be found elsewhere in the state, such as its organ transplant unit and children’s hospital.

BCBSMS maintains that even without UMMC, it is still meeting its network adequacy requirement. BCBSMS also said that the remedy in a situation where network adequacy is an issue is for it to provide network level benefits to its customers for those services, which it has offered to do by directing its members to sign a written direction of payment instructing the insurer to pay the hospital. 

UMMC has declined to accept those payments from BCBS, arguing that it would allow BCBSMS to continue paying at unsustainable rates. 

UMMC and Blue Cross have not been in communication since April 1, when UMMC officially went out of network with the insurance company, according to officials from both entities. Tens of thousands of Mississippians – some of them gravely ill and others in need of advanced specialties only available at UMMC – are stuck in the middle of the dispute.

Though the two parties have had similar contract disputes in previous years, this is the first time UMMC has been removed from BCBSMS’ network. 

As a result, tens of thousands of Mississippians have been left to face higher out-of-pocket medical expenses or find care elsewhere. Potential transplant recipients who have spent months or years on organ donation waitlists have been placed on hold. Parents of children who require specialized care that can only be provided at UMMC’s children’s hospital have been left with costly and inconvenient options for continuing their child’s care. 

UMMC is asking Blue Cross for substantial increases to inpatient, outpatient and professional reimbursement rates, some as large as 50%. Overall reimbursement from Blue Cross would increase by around 30% in the first year of the new contract. 

Mississippi has the lowest reimbursement rate from commercial insurance companies for inpatient services in the nation, according to a 2021 white paper by the actuarial and consulting firm Milliman. While UMMC maintains that BCBSMS is paying them well below market rates for other academic medical centers in the region, BCBSMS argues that agreeing to the increases would necessitate significant premium increases for their customers – despite a Mississippi Today investigation that revealed the insurer is sitting on an enormous reserve of money.

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The state accepted the guilty pleas of Nancy and Zach New in Mississippi’s sprawling welfare scandal on Tuesday — a move that makes their agreement to cooperate with prosecutors and testify against their co-defendants official.

The News had submitted their guilty pleas for the state charges last week. 

Nancy New, a 69-year-old former educator, is pleading guilty to four counts of bribing a public official, two counts of fraud against the government, six counts of wire fraud and one count of racketeering. Her deal comes with a total maximum sentence of 100 years, but prosecutors have recommended that the state sentence her to equal or lesser time than her federal sentence, once federal sentencing has occurred. 

In other words, state prosecutors recommend Nancy New serve her entire sentence in federal prison — allowing her to avoid serving time in the more barbaric state prisons — and serve no additional time for the state charges above what she serves in the federal case. She pleaded guilty in the federal case earlier last week to one count of money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of ten years.

READ MORE: Nancy and Zach New plead guilty to bribery and fraud in state welfare case

Zach New, the 39-year-old vice president of his mother’s nonprofit, pleaded guilty to the same charges, minus racketeering and one less count of wire fraud. State prosecutors have offered him the same deal to serve only the number of years he receives in the separate federal case. He pleaded guilty in the federal case to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which comes with a maximum sentence of five years. 

Prosecutors split off Zach’s charge in a separate bill of information, a document that is filed when a defendant agrees to plead guilty without the grand jury handing down an indictment, to ensure that Zach would be able to serve his time in federal prisons.

Both Nancy and Zach New have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and testify against their co-defendants. Both state and federal criminal investigations are ongoing and could result in charges against additional people, sources close to the probes say.

READ MORE: Phil Bryant had his sights on a payout as welfare funds flowed to Brett Favre

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A proposed overhaul of Mississippi’s state financial aid programs is complicated, unlikely to address existing issues and could create problems for low-income students, according to a new report from the Urban Institute. 

Instead of pursuing the Mississippi One Grant, the report recommends the state consolidate its college aid programs into two simple grants: One program to provide low-income students with need-based aid, and another that makes awards based on a students’ grades or test scores. 

“The state will always face trade-offs between controlling the budget and providing the support on which so many students depend,” the report says. “But designing programs that allow students who cannot afford college on their own is the most promising strategy for ensuring a high return on the state’s investment.” 

The report also says the One Grant will not effectively help more students get degrees, in part because it will decrease the funding available for low-income students who already struggle to afford college in Mississippi, the poorest state in the country. 

“Taking the money from students who really depend on it just doesn’t seem like the best way to balance the budget, because it’s very short-sighted,” said Sandy Baum, one of the report’s authors. 

Baum and her co-author, Kristin Blagg, have studied state aid programs in Texas and New Jersey. Baum and Blagg studied annual reports from Mississippi’s Office of Student Financial Aid, looked at existing research on state aid and college access, and talked with Get2College, a local non-profit. 

Mississippi’s three college financial aid programs have faced scrutiny in recent years. Advocates for college access in Mississippi, like Get2College, say the state’s programs no longer serve their original purpose, which is to help low income and middle class students afford to go to college.

The Postsecondary Education Financial Assistance Board, which oversees Mississippi’s financial aid programs, is primarily concerned about the growing cost. As the price of college tuition increases in Mississippi, so has the cost of the state financial aid programs, particularly the Higher Education Legislative Exchange Grant for Needy Students, which pays for all four years of undergrad for low-income students. 

The board has explored ways to minimize the cost of its programs since 2019. The One Grant, unveiled last October, was the board’s latest proposal. 

Under the One Grant, the state would award aid based on a student’s financial need and academic merit. The highest award of $4,500 would go to the poorest students with the best ACT scores — that award is significantly less than many low-income students currently receive from the HELP grant. 

READ MORE: How much financial aid will you get under the Mississippi One Grant?

While low-income students would lose thousands of dollars in financial aid under the One Grant, more affluent students would gain money. That also means that Black students, on average, would lose money, and white students would gain money. 

“Every state has different demographics, different circumstances and different goals,” Baum said. “But what’s always going to be true is, awards based on test scores, and on high school grades, are going to be disproportionately tilted towards more affluent students.” 

Research shows that affluent students whose families can afford college are more likely to go regardless of the financial aid they can receive, Baum said, whereas grants and scholarships make more of a difference for low-income students. 

Baum said she would urge policymakers in Mississippi to see how the One Grant creates “this problem of trying to kill two birds with one stone.” 

“It’s really tough to take one specific policy tool and use it to solve both of your very diverse goals,” she said. “That’s not something that’s specific to Mississippi.”  

College is increasingly unaffordable for the average Mississippi family as the eight public universities have steadily increased tuition. Yet lawmakers and members of the Post-Secondary Board have looked for ways to limit the number of students who can qualify for college financial aid in Mississippi. 

Last year, state Sen. Briggs Hopson, R-Vicksburg, proposed a bill that would raise the ACT scores required to get financial aid through the MTAG and MESG programs. His proposed requirements — 17 for MTAG and 30 for MESG — are higher than the minimum ACT score of 16 that most students need to gain entrance to Mississippi’s public universities. 

The report says it is “counterproductive” that the ACT standards to receive state aid in Mississippi are higher than the scores required to be admitted to public universities. 

“You don’t have to believe that everybody should go to college right after high school to think that, if you’re going to accept students and enroll them, you should do everything you can to help them succeed,” Baum said. “And that means both giving them academic support and social support and financial support.” 

“It’s hard to see the logic of saying, you know what, let’s accept them and then hope that they can’t afford to come,” she added. 

The One Grant has floundered as a proposal. This session, no lawmaker introduced the One Grant in a bill. The Post-Secondary Board is now considering ways to engage lawmakers in discussion about state financial aid programs this summer. 

Baum and Blagg hope board members will consider the proposal the next time they think about retooling state aid. Their report recommends that Mississippi should consider programs that have the same deadline, require minimal application materials, pay for summer semesters, and provide aid to part-time and adult students. 

“In the next go around, a good next step (for the board) is thinking clearly about separating out where you want the aid for merit to go and where you want aid for financial needs to go,” Blagg said. 

Editor’s note: Get2College is a program of the Woodward Hines Education Foundation, a Mississippi Today donor.

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