HEALTHCARE
A Healthier Mississippi
- Allow Mississippians and providers to be more in-control of healthcare decisions, rather than government bureaucrats.
- Free the healthcare market by repealing and reforming our out-of-date, monopolistic Certificate of Need laws (C.O.N.).
- Reform and restructure our Medicaid system to prevent hard-working Mississippians from being forced to go to the emergency room as their only alternative to care.
Our existing healthcare model is broken, and it seems no one is immune to its effects. Hard-working Mississippians, who are struggling to put food on the table, cannot afford basic healthcare. Medical providers are beyond frustrated with our current system, and hospitals are facing economic pressures at every angle, especially rural hospitals. It is going to take serious reform and common-sense solutions to get us there.
Mississippi must look beyond “how we’ve always done things”. We need to look to new innovation and basic free-market principles to lower costs, improve quality, and increase accessibility of healthcare for the hard-working people of our state.
We must also dismantle the bureaucratic Certificate of Need (C.O.N.) laws, which restrict the supply of critical healthcare facilities, equipment, and even procedures. These monopolistic laws, which inflate the cost of both Medicaid and private insurance, are forcing rural hospitals and clinics to close shop, suppress wages of healthcare workers, and contribute to doctors not wanting to work in our state.
C.O.N. laws were declared to be in violation of the Federal Anti-Trust Act by the Federal Trade Commission, and were repealed by the Federal government decades ago. The Federal Department of Justice recommended that states repeal or reform these monopolistic laws. Most states have complied and either repealed or reformed most of their C.O.N. laws, yet Mississippi still protects these corporate healthcare monopolies at the expense of its citizens. This is unacceptable in a state that should be doing everything in its power to increase access to healthcare and reduce its unsustainable costs. Free-market principles work – even in healthcare.
When it comes to our Medicaid program, pursuing real Medicaid reform is no longer a question, 200,000 – 300,000 hard-working Mississippians and $1 – $2 Billion dollars are being left off the table each year. We can fix this by working with the Trump administration, in a bipartisan fashion, to help the hard-working people of Mississippi. Emergency room visits, which are costing us billions, can no longer be the solution to their problem. Rather than creating a new government program or incentive, we need to engage with those who have their finger on the pulse of the medical community to help provide better solutions.