Medicaid: Face the facts and do the job now

The Clarion-Ledger, 3/26/8

The 2008 session of the Mississippi Legislature is clicking along with no major bumps, but there remains the mountain ahead no member seems to want to face.

Medicaid is going broke. The health care system that serves a quarter of the population in Mississippi will run out of money before the end of the fiscal year and will face a bigger problem after July 1, unless lawmakers infuse more state funding into the system.

The state’s funding problems have been building, as they have in other states as health care costs escalate. Mississippi has been getting a break because of special federal aid after Hurricane Katrina.