Editor’s note: Even though the 2025 Mississippi legislative session ended again without lawmakers addressing Medicaid expansion, Chuck Poole, former senior minister of Northminster Baptist Church in Jackson, writes for Mississippi Today Ideas that it is never too late to provide health care for poor Mississippians. Theoretically, Gov. Tate Reeves could allow legislators to consider Medicaid expansion in the special session that he will call in the coming days.

Like clean air, adequate nutrition, decent shelter and safe water, healthcare is a necessity, not a luxury; which is why Medicaid expansion is a morally right and true thing, not a politically red or blue thing.

We don’t need another dialogue or seminar, hearing or study to tell us what we already know. We just need to act on the truth we already have; the truth that basic fundamental healthcare is a necessary part of a healthy life; a universal need which next door neighbors Mississippi and Alabama can make more available to more people by acting to close the healthcare coverage gap for the nearly 300,000 Mississippians and Alabamians who make too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid, but too little to be able to access private health insurance. 

The fact that Mississippi and Alabama are among the 10 states to refuse to expand Medicaid is all the more bewildering when one considers the fact that year after year, in poll after poll, Mississippi and Alabama are the states that report the highest percentage of Christians; Mississippi and Alabama, annually vying for “Buckle on the Bible Belt.” 

So how is it that the states with the most Christians continue to be among the least Christian when it comes to caring for those who are most in need of healthcare access, equity and justice? The buckle on the Bible belt; in so many ways so beautiful, but in this way badly broken. 

Medicaid expansion is not a magic wand, but we do know that if we fully expand Medicaid, it will infuse new life into struggling Mississippi and Alabama hospitals, shrink Mississippi’s and Alabama’s growing maternal health deserts, create new Mississippi and Alabama healthcare jobs, and, most importantly, bring comfort and care to thousands of hard working Mississippians and Alabamians who are presently struggling and suffering in the healthcare coverage gap. 

And, we know how to pay for it; by accessing the same federal dollars that 40 other states, red and blue,  Republican and Democratic, are receiving to undergird Medicaid expansion for their residents; our federal tax dollars, funding their healthcare, but not our own.

All of which is to say that there is simply no good reason for Mississippi and Alabama to refuse to do the right thing and close the healthcare coverage gap; not someday, or next legislative session, or once we find out what the new administration in Washington might do, but now. 

As Preacher King, one of the Bible belt’s most courageous Jesus preachers, once wisely said, “It is never the wrong time to do the right thing.”

Chuck Poole retired in 2022 from 45 years of pastoral life during which he served churches in Jackson, Georgia, North Carolina and Washington D.C. The author of nine books, numerous published articles, one gospel song and the lyrics to three hymns, Poole has served as a “minister on the street” in Jackson, as an advocate for interfaith conversation, and as an ally to our immigrant neighbors. Poole and his wife Marcia now live in Birmingham, where he serves on the staff of Together for Hope.

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