Holdout states consider expanding Medicaid — with work requirements

By Shalina Chatlani, Stateline.org

In Humphreys County, Mississippi — about 70 miles north of the state capital, in the heart of the fertile Delta region — a third of the residents live in poverty. In Belzoni, the county seat, there are just a handful of health care clinics. The town’s only major hospital closed more than a decade ago, around the same time its catfish industry collapsed.

Jobs in the area are scarce, said Wardell Walton, who was mayor of Belzoni from 2005 to 2013. But even if there were jobs, he said, a lot of Belzoni residents wouldn’t be able to get to them — they don’t own cars, and there is no public transportation.

Many people in Belzoni, and Humphreys County, would get free health care coverage if the state expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. But for a decade, Mississippi and nine other states have declined to do so. Republican opponents have long derided expansion as a government handout. They also have warned that the federal government would someday renege on its promise to cover nearly all of it.

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