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READ: Mississippi Democrats must look for Plan C after stinging defeats Tuesday

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New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (9) looks to pass as Tampa Bay Buccaneers outside linebacker Shaquil Barrett (58) works against offensive tackle Ryan Ramczyk (71) during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Nov. 8, 2020, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Jason Behnken)

It was late Sunday night and on the New Orleans Saints post-game radio show Deuce McAllister was searching for the right word to describe what had happened in the showdown between the Saints and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Tampa.

So McAllister reached into his trove of what he calls his “Mississippi twang” for this description: “The Saints thonked ’em.”

Rick Cleveland

You ask me, that’s some genuine rural Scott County onomatopoeia right there and it fits. The Saints’ 38-3 thrashing over the previously 6-2 Bucs was a “thonking” of the first order. The victory moves the 6-2 Saints a half game ahead of Tampa Bay in the NFC South. Two of the three Bucs defeats have been to the Saints, New Orleans now would hold the playoffs tiebreaker if the two teams wind up tied in the standings. And since the Atlanta Falcons and Carolina Panthers, the other two NFC South members are sitting at 3-6, the Saints are sitting pretty.

Understand, the Saints were 4.5-point underdogs, were playing on the road and were facing Tom Brady, the most accomplished quarterback in NFL history. Brady? The Saints thonked him too, sacking him three times and swarming him many others. The Saints picked him off three times and made him look, perhaps for the first time, like the 43-year-old he is. It was the worst defeat of Brady’s Hall of Fame career.

Just goes to show that even the winning-est quarterback in league history is lost without pass protection and a running game. The Bucs had neither. Here, perhaps, is the stat of this football season: The Bucs ran the ball five times for eight yards. That’s right: five rushes in four quarters.

Deuce McAllister

Said McAllister, nearly as good as an analyst as he was as an All Pro running back: “Five runs the entire game? That’s crazy. If I were the offensive coordinator, I couldn’t face my running back after a game like that.”

McAllister, who often ran the ball five times per possession as one of the Saints all-time greats, makes a really good point. When the Saints figured out the Bucs couldn’t – or wouldn’t – run it, the defensive line began racing one another to get to Brady.

But perhaps the biggest takeaway from Sunday night’s game was this: The Saints, for the first time all season, looked like a Super Bowl contender. They looked like a team that could win it all. This was their fifth straight victory but the first of those five that was by more than six points. The three others were all by three points and two of those were in overtime.

Before, the Saints were scraping by, doing just enough to win. This time, they put it all together: offense, defense and special teams.

Drew Brees, with all his receivers back from injuries and COVID, looked like the old Drew Brees and took back the NFL career lead for touchdown passes from Brady. (Brees now has 564, Brady 561.) That’s 1,125 combined touchdown passes. Let’s pause for a moment and let those numbers sink in.

Demario Davis, the Saints’ ball-hawking linebacker from Brandon, obviously did.

“You’re talking about two of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game going head to head,” Davis said, post-game. “I just don’t want to move past this moment, because this is history. The fact that all of us get to be part of this, it’s just an amazing experience.”

Brady would probably have another description.

Rogelio V. Solis / Associated Press

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees’ right shoulder was often iced down at hot, humid Millsaps in 2006.

Brees did have a running game to keep the Bucs defense honest, and when the Saints threw it, he often had time to comb his thinning hair before picking out an open receiver. He looked just about as sharp as he has since he resurrected his career back at Millsaps College 14 years ago. Amazingly, he spread his 29 pass completions around to a dozen different receivers.

The Saints called on punter Thomas Morstead only once. So complete was this Saints victory, Morstead responded with a booming, sky-high 51-yarder.

Yes, it was a thonking. And Bruce Arians, the Bucs venerable head coach whose first full-time job was at Mississippi State way back in 1978, had a description that was every bit as fitting as McAllister’s.

Said Arians: “It was shocking… they kicked our ass in every phase.”

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‘It could be Holy Hell for some people’: Fate of the Affordable Care Act, health care for Mississippians in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments against the Affordable Care Act this week. If it is struck down, advocates say it will have long-lasting effects on the state, where as many as 450,000 Mississippians will be left without access to affordable healthcare.

By Erica Hensley | November 9, 2020

As a community health worker, Christopher Roby devotes his career to helping folks access health care and support services they need. It’s a lot of paperwork, on-the-ground liaisons with clinics, hospitals and insurers, and time spent earning trust of clients who’ve sometimes gone their whole lives without health care. 

Recently those clients included his parents, who after years of forgoing costly health insurance — and the preventive and primary care that comes with it — enrolled in coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s federal marketplace. Like many, they were hesitant to hand over personal information necessary to enroll, but as a trusted son, Roby connected the logistical dots to coverage.

The McCrays — Roby’s stepfather Stanley, 48, and mother Angie, 58 — have never had employer-based insurance from their various jobs across the Mississippi Delta. Now in Indianola, Stanley McCray does seasonal farming and Angie McCray is a homemaker, cleaning houses for a living — private health insurance was too unaffordable for the couple and they don’t qualify for state-sponsored Medicaid or federal Medicare. 

Like many public health practitioners, Roby is watching from the sidelines as the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments over the fate of the ACA. Though nothing would change on the ground for some time, the fate of the law has some advocates nervous about the long-standing implications of its removal, which would leave hundreds of thousands of Mississippians uninsured.

The high court this week will hear arguments for California v. Texas brought by 20 Republican governors and attorneys general, including Mississippi’s former Gov. Phil Bryant. Collectively, Texas challenged the constitutionality of the ACA, which provides avenues and tax credits to buy health insurance and broad patient protections for affordability and access. If it is struck down, nearly all Mississippians will be touched in one way or another. 

If the law were to be overturned, more than just Roby’s parents’ access to health care is at stake — the wide-reaching health law touches nearly every American, clinic and medical reimbursement in some way — but they’re foreground in his mind. 

Three years ago, Roby convinced them to try enrolling in the federal marketplace, where their income might qualify for premium tax credits to go toward their monthly insurance payments. It did, and they’ve been enrolled ever since. Once they started seeking regular care, both were diagnosed with pre-existing hypertension that puts them high-risk for COVID-19 and other health complications. But since getting access to regular treatment and meds, they’ve managed their blood pressure and improved their health. 

“My biggest concern is they won’t be able to continue to be covered for things that might emerge as they age. We have to worry about cancer, deteriorating bones, limited mobility,” he said, adding he’s worried that their improved health with better access to preventive care and treatment will reverse course. 

But Roby and his parents are hopeful. For the first time in nearly two decades, last week the McCrays voted and said preserving affordable health care guided their choices on the ballot. 

More than just a way for low- to moderate-income families — anywhere from about $26,000 to $105,000 annual incomes for families of four — to buy health insurance, the law comprises wide-ranging ramifications for insurers, hospitals and patients. 

Currently, 600,000 Missisisippians are protected from being charged more or denied insurance based on previous medical diagnoses, such as heart conditions, cancers and now, COVID-19.

In 2019, nearly 250,000 Mississippians, or about 10% of the state, were eligible for tax credits to help cover insurance premiums through the federal marketplace. With record unemployment due to the COVID-19 pandemic — about 130,000 extra unemployed people as of July — the number of families who will qualify is growing. Projections show the state’s uninsured population ballooning to nearly 450,000 if the ACA is overturned.

All Mississippians are also protected through “essential health benefits” that insurers must cover, such as emergency treatment, preventive services like vaccinations and family planning, and wellness care such as annual cancer screenings.

All of these gains for Mississippians weigh heavily on Maria Morris, a program consultant at the Community Health Center Association of Mississippi.

For 15 years, she’s coordinated public health partnerships across the state to increase Mississippians’ access to affordable health care. For the last decade, she’s focused on helping community health centers prepare for open enrollment on the ACA insurance marketplace. 

Though the fate of the law looms in the background of her training calls this year as open enrollment kicks off, she says she can’t let the potential losses from an overturned ACA distract her and encourages other enrollment counselors to do the same. The necessary switch to virtual training and enrollment this year is enough pressure alone. 

When training other health centers to enroll people in health insurance, her message is clear: correct misinformation you hear and stay focused on getting them the access to health care they need.

“We (counselors) need to get people enrolled,” Morris said. “We need to make sure, especially in light of COVID, that we reach as many people as we can to get them enrolled.”

In 2019 a lower federal court ruled the “individual mandate,” which required people to have health insurance or pay a fine in order to bulk up the country’s pool of insured, unconstitutional. Two years prior, Congress set the penalty fine to $0, effectively negating the tax and paving the way for the Texas lawsuit.

Opponents of the law say the now-unconstitutional mandate is central to the ACA and without it, the whole law must fall. Health care advocates say while the mandate glued the ACA together by aiming to broadly increase coverage — especially for young, healthy people and those who have never had insurance before — it’s disclusion shouldn’t doom the law’s other unrelated protections.

The omnibus ACA created the Healthcare Marketplace, or federal health exchange, which allows consumers to compare and shop for insurance in a single policy-guaranteed web portal. Last year alone, 98,000 Mississippians signed up for health insurance through the marketplace. Of those final enrollees, 98% percent qualified for tax subsidies to help pay for monthly premiums, another key feature of the ACA. This is where counselor Morris and others come in — helping folks meet eligibility requirements and enrolling in the insurance.

The health centers she works with train staff to identify un- and under-insured patients, and get them connected with counselors who can help them enroll in insurance plans. Insurance policies not only help the patients with specialty costs and meds, but also benefit the clinics, by increasing their reimbursements.

Most of the centers work on sliding scale fees and provide primary and preventive care to people who otherwise don’t have a medical home. Enrollment assistance has long been a key part of the ACA, and will continue to be until patients stop needing the help or the access is pulled out from under them, Morris says.

She and other health advocates worry about the backslide in individuals’ health gains who have become healthier through access to preventive and wellness care, but risk losing those gains if their health insurance goes away. 

“…(New insurance consumers) see the benefit out there of having access to the hospital and getting your prescription medication. And then too, people have aged in such a way that they’ve been able to improve their health standards. And then now, they (potentially) can’t get access to it? It would be totally devastating,” Morris said. “And then you’re talking about stress and depression and anxiety on top of COVID. I would hate to have to live through a time like that. It would be totally catastrophic.”

Despite slashed budgets under the Trump Administration for enrollment assistance, counselors like Morris have steadily increased ACA marketplace enrollment every year since 2017, when enrollment took a hit across the U.S. Policy experts hypothesize the dive in enrollment was due to market instability fostered by President Donald Trump’s “repeal and replace” rhetoric that confused many who, if they ended up with navigators’ help, asked, “We still have Obamacare?”

But despite the enrollment dip then, Mississippians are still actively using the marketplace to access health insurance. Enrollment has increased by nearly 20% and is on track to meet or surpass it’s peak 2016 enrollment of 109,000. In 2018, Mississippi was one of only five states to see enrollment gains.

In other words, the marketplace is a popular provision of the ACA in Mississippi. But it’s not the only benefit the state has seen.

Since 2014, an average of 91,000 Mississippians a year have gained health insurance, putting a dent in the state’s high uninsurance rate, and with it, reimbursing clinics and hospitals for previously uncompensated care. 

But far more — about a third of the state’s population — were protected from losing health insurance based on their medical histories. Under the ACA’s protections, insurers have to cover the 600,000 Mississippians with pre-existing conditions. 

The marketplace in Mississippi saw a rocky start and suffered from limited competition over the years, with insurers dropping out over time. But for the first time since 2017, Mississippi’s marketplace will see two insurers, Ambetter and Molina. For average plans, costs are down 6%.

Still, healthcare costs continue to rise in the U.S. — though slower than previous decades — particularly for employer-based plans. The ACA purposefully avoided interfering with employer-based health insurance, other than requiring employers with 50 or more workers to offer it and ensuring certain patient protections. 

About 40% of Mississippians get their healthcare this way — fewer than almost any other state. As COVID-19 caused record numbers of workers to lose jobs and health insurance, more will qualify for insurance and tax credits under the ACA this year, which tells experts it’s a dangerous time to pull the lifeline. 

Enrollment counselor Morris is especially worried about new insurance consumers — a major enrollment target of the ACA — who have bought health insurance for the first time in their lives over recent years. Uninsurance rates have plummeted in Mississippi since the ACA passed, especially for people of color. Black Mississippians’ uninsured rate dropped by 35% since 2008, compared to a 27% drop for the state. 

Those gains could all disappear with the fate of the wide-reaching health law in the balance, though advocates reiterate that nothing would likely change within the year and encourage people to seek enrollment.

Mississippi has one of the nation’s highest rates of pre-existing conditions — such as high blood pressure, heart conditions and now, COVID-19 — netting more built-in protections under the ACA here. 

The COVID-19 pandemic not only puts individuals’ healthcare and insurance under increased use, but it at the same time has gutted hospitals and clinics operating revenues. Public health advocates tend to favor increasing access to care and insurance, but say now more than ever overturning the ACA could upend years of progress expanding insurance rolls, and with that, funding safety-net trauma hospitals, like Jackson’s University of Mississippi Medical Center.

“If (ACA) goes away with nothing to replace it, it could be totally devastating because you’re talking about the elimination of the pre-existing conditions (protections). And so that puts it back into place. We talked about expanding coverage up to the age of 26, that goes away,” Morris, the enrollment counselor, said.

She recalls helping a man in his late fifties enroll for the first time and worries what will happen if he loses the coverage. 

“It’s his first time ever getting health insurance in his life, and to go back to not having coverage because he can’t afford it? Those are just a small number of things that could cause devastation and tragedy to people that … need health insurance now more than ever,” Morris said. “It could be just like Holy Hell for some people. I mean, because you’re talking about giving somebody access to something that they needed all this time and then you’re coming back and taking it … that’s where the stress and the devastation and hopelessness come in.”

Open enrollment on the federal marketplace runs through Dec. 15, 2020 for 2021 coverage. Visit healthcare.gov for more information, or get help from certified community counselors and navigators.

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Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today

Democratic Senate challenger Mike Espy concedes to incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith at the Mississippi Two Museums on Nov. 3, 2020.

Mississippi Democrats must be looking for a Plan C after Tuesday’s disappointing election results.

Mike Espy ran a well-financed campaign — the best funded by a Democrat in the state’s history — as he embraced the national Democratic Party and its leaders in his challenge of incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. His goal was to put together a strong ground game to attract new, presumably progressive voters to the polls and to run sleek campaign ads trying to convince white suburban, primarily women voters to cross over and support him. He garnered roughly 42% of the vote in unofficial and incomplete returns against Hyde-Smith.

By contrast, in 2019 then-Attorney General Jim Hood, vying to be the first Democratic governor since 1999, ran on his own, barely mentioning national Democrats. His campaign ads, often featuring his big old pickup truck, rifle and dog, sent the message that while a Democrat he was a good ole boy. Hood’s campaign was closer to the campaigns run by other Democrats viewed to be legitimate statewide candidates. Hood came up short in his bid for the Governor’s Mansion just as other Democrats had in past elections.

Before his 2019 defeat to Republican Tate Reeves, Hood for many years was one of the few bright spots for Mississippi Democrats, serving four terms as attorney general, three of those as the only statewide elected Democrat.

Espy, who was involved in Hood’s 2019 campaign, took to heart that Albert Einstein quote that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results” and opted to run a different kind of campaign.

But Plan B also did not work.

After the Associated Press called the election Tuesday, it took Espy several minutes to make a public appearance at his election night party that was limited in attendance because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He did not speak from the stage, but instead stood in the middle of the floor, answering multiple questions from reporters.

He was obviously disappointed, but did not duck questions. Espy said he planned to leave the campaign apparatus that his record fund-raising built to the beleaguered state Democratic Party.

“I am proud of the data we have been able to amass,” Espy said. “We are leaving it all with the Mississippi Democratic Party so that others who might want to try for office can use it. We have targeted data. We have precinct specific data.”

He said that “maybe others who come behind me can do a better job.”

Perhaps, but both Espy and Hood were unique politicians. Hood had a rural, crossover appeal. Espy was a history-making politician as the state’s first African American U.S. House member since the 19^th century and the nation’s first Black secretary of agriculture.

Despite losing, both Hood and Espy gave Democrats hope in the past two elections. Espy won a respectable 46.4% of the vote in his 2018 special election against Hyde-Smith and Hood garnered 46.8% in his gubernatorial campaign against Reeves. Both won a few majority white counties – an accomplishment in these days for a Mississippi Democrat. On Tuesday night, it appears the only majority white county Espy won was Oktibbeha, home of Mississippi State University.

Espy will finish with more votes than he garnered in 2018, but a lower percentage of the vote. In high turnout presidential election years, Mississippi Democrats are essentially swamped when both sides are motivated to vote.

It does not appear Espy was able to generate the record turnout among Black voters he said he would need to prevail and it is unlikely that he garnered the 22% of the white vote he had stated as a goal.

Despite that much ballyhooed campaign apparatus, Espy got a smaller percentage of the total vote than Democrat Ronnie Musgrove did when he ran against Republican Roger Wicker in a 2008 Senate election in another presidential year that set a record for voter turnout in Mississippi. There was speculation that the 2008 record turnout of 1,289,939 voters would be broken this year. While the election is yet to be certified and votes are still being counted, it is questionable whether a record will be set. Interestingly it was a record turnout nationally.

But it is difficult to argue that a higher turnout would have helped state Democrats. Right now there are just more Republican-leaning voters in the state than Democrats.

“The fact is it’s not about a strategy or the quality of the candidate when it comes to a Democrat running for statewide office in Mississippi,” said Michael Rejebian, who worked on the Hood campaign. “Republicans could put a hamster on the ballot and as long as it had an ‘R’ dangling from its neck it would win. That is the current landscape in which Democrats find ourselves.”

Plan C?

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A record turnout of voters have spoken and President Donald Trump will be a one-term  President.

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Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

Joe Biden speaks to his supporters during the Get Out and Vote event at Tougaloo College’s Kroger Gymnasium Sunday, March 8, 2020.

On Saturday morning, Joseph Biden Jr. was elected the 46th president of the United States. He will be joined in the White House by Sen. Kamala Harris, the first woman and person of color to serve as vice-president.

According to every major U.S. decision desk, Biden was projected to receive at least 273 electoral college votes at the time the race was called, while incumbent President Donald Trump was projected received 214. Though votes are still being counted and finalized in a handful of states, as of Saturday morning Biden received 74,488,579 votes while Trump received 70,337,214, according to the New York Times.

Shortly after the race was called, Biden changed his Twitter bio to “President-elect” and shared a message encouraging unity in the country whether people voted for him or not.

America, I’m honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country.

The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a President for all Americans — whether you voted for me or not.

I will keep the faith that you have placed in me. pic.twitter.com/moA9qhmjn8

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 7, 2020

Harris also tweeted a video:

We did it, @JoeBiden. pic.twitter.com/oCgeylsjB4

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 7, 2020

Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today

Trump supporters gathered on the south lawn of the State Capitol to protest the outcome of the Presidential election. Protesters demanded that every “legal” vote be counted.

In Jackson, a group of roughly 80 people gathered on Saturday afternoon outside the state Capitol to wave Trump flags protest the vote count.

Read more about the presidential election from the Clarion Ledger here.

Vickie King contributed to this report.

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After losses on the flag and medical marijuana, Governor Tate Reeves vows to stop early voting.

READ: ‘Not while I’m governor!’ Reeves vows to block Mississippi early, mail-in voting

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