Mississippi Senate passes trimmed Medicaid expansion and sends bill back to the House

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi lawmakers will try to negotiate on expanding Medicaid in one of the poorest states in the U.S. after the Senate voted Thursday for a vastly different plan than one proposed by the House.

The upper chamber’s proposal would insure fewer people and bring less federal money to the state than the version approved by the House last month. But the Senate’s approach includes a tougher work requirement and measures to prevent a wider expansion of Medicaid benefits in the future.

Senators debated the bill for nearly two hours before approving it in a 36-16 vote. The move to increase eligibility for the government-funded health insurance program that covers low-income people has set off a struggle between Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and members of his own party. In a social media post Wednesday, Reeves called the bill “Obamacare Medicaid” and said it would amount to “welfare expansion to those able-bodied adults that could work but choose not to.”

Republican Sen. Kevin Blackwell, who chairs the Senate Medicaid Committee, has dubbed the Senate proposal Medicaid expansion “lite,” and said it is much narrower that what is allowed under the Affordable Care Act, a 2010 federal health overhaul signed by then-President Barack Obama.

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