Miss. House tells governor to delay Medicaid cuts

Published 10:45 pm Friday, June 27, 2008

JACKSON(AP) — Mississippi’s new budget year will start without a solution to a Medicaid money problem.

Lawmakers have left the Capitol until Wednesday — a day after the new fiscal year begins. Medicaid officials say the program needs another $90 million to get through the coming 12 months.

Republican Gov. Haley Barbour wants lawmakers to restructure some hospital taxes to cover the shortfall, but many Democrats say they want to increase the cigarette excise tax instead.

Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant on Thursday blocked consideration of the tobacco tax during the current special legislative session.

Only a governor can set the agenda for a special session. Bryant ruled that Barbour’s agenda specifically said a tax on Medicaid providers could be the only solution considered for the health care program for the needy.

Barbour has said he will order cuts in Medicaid services this summer if legislators don’t pass his plan. He has said he might announce cuts next week. Those would take effect in August, after a 30-day response period.

With the tobacco tax apparently blocked for now, the Democrat-controlled House voted Friday, largely along party lines, to tell Barbour not to make any cuts in the program until at least February. Most Democrats voted to give the instructions, and most Republicans sided with the governor.

The House plan appears to have little traction in the Senate.

‘‘All it does it put off coming to grips with what we need to do,’’ said Senate Public Health Committee Chairman Hob Bryan, D-Amory, who is working across party lines to try to pass the governor’s plan.

Barbour was traveling Friday and was not immediately available to respond to the House vote.

Some lawmakers argued the Legislature can’t tell the governor what to do. Others said that in the past several years, Medicaid has been millions of dollars short for six months or longer and Barbour never made cuts.

‘‘We’re scratching an itch that doesn’t have to be scratched right now. It’s a manufactured crisis,’’ said Rep. Tommy Reynolds, D-Charleston.

The federal government told Mississippi in 2005 that the state had to stop using part of a complicated formula to pay for Medicaid. Since the early 1990s, the state had collected a tax from hospitals, labeled the money as part of the Medicaid budget and leveraged that to pull in extra money from the federal government.

Over the past three years, the state has patched the program by using millions of dollars from other parts of the state budget — including some federal money the state received to cover increased Medicaid expenses after Hurricane Katrina. In some years, the state’s general tax collections have been higher than expected, and some of that extra money has been put into Medicaid.

Barbour says the program’s budget formula has been in limbo for too long and he wants a solution now.

The Mississippi Hospital Association endorsed Barbour’s tax plan in early June. Since then, some hospital administrators have said they oppose it because they believe it will hurt their budgets.

Rep. Cecil Brown, D-Jackson, said the vote to tell the governor not to cut the program this summer would send a clear message to people who are worried that they or their loved ones will lose Medicaid services.

‘‘Either you want the governor to make the cuts or you don’t want the governor to make the cuts,’’ Brown said. ‘‘Up or down vote. Suck it up, folks.’’

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The bill is House Bill 17.



AP-CS-06-27-08 1604EDT