Moving single mothers from Medicaid to middle income
Most Mississippians on Medicaid work low-paying jobs that leads to indefinite coverage, particularly women who head their households.
For example, Mississippi Medicaid covers 65% of pregnancies. Most pregnant residents are single, young adults who work low-paying, dead-end, jobs that offer no health benefits, pregnancy accommodations, paid family leave or middle-income career opportunities. Those single mothers typically work full-time, year-round.
Many are found in cashier positions and other low wage jobs in service, retail, manufacturing and food industries that do not require any formal education or training. These large industries earn billions, pay low tax rates and rely on MS to pay the billions in healthcare costs of their pregnant employees, hence, corporate welfare.
Therefore, increasing access to Medicaid without addressing this permanent under-employment class will continue the cycle of poor single women relying on Medicaid to cover the costs of all their pregnancies and births. It’s a social and economic cycle that desperately needs to be broken.
The higher a pregnant woman’s educational level the less likely the pregnancy will be terminated and the less likely she and her child will experience adverse birth outcomes, and in live in poverty.
Most Mississippi children who reside in poverty live in single-female-headed-households. In MS, 42% of female-headed-households live in poverty; 13% are White, 28% Black, 23% Latinas, 20% Asian, and 19% Native. Also, 26% of MS children reside in these homes.
In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 38,469 pregnancies in Mississippi. Approximately 56% of pregnancies occurred among unmarried women. Among single pregnant residents, Blacks, whites, and other ethnic groups accounted for about 60%, 35%, and 3%, respectively, of residents who were single at pregnancy and birth.
Merely 14.5% (5,592) of all pregnant women in Mississippi had a college degree in 2022. Among them Black women accounted for 28% (1,564), white women 68.5% (3,833), and other ethnic groups 3.4%.
Gov. Tate Reeves pledged to support pregnant women; however, the state has primarily focused on increasing adoption, foster care and funding (through massive tax credits) pregnancy crisis centers that do not offer medical care, long-term assistance or help women escape poverty.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch, stated, “If they’re living in poverty, let’s change those dynamics, let’s change the upscaling. Let’s go for the education,” but she has merely created a database, the Mississippi Access to Maternal Assistance, that predominantly promotes services offered at PCCs.
I recommend the Mississippi Legislature work with community colleges to pass legislation that funds a healthcare workforce development pipeline initiative that will move single pregnant women from Medicaid to middle income.
The statewide pipeline initiative would be designed to attract, enroll, and support single pregnant women as they pursue a healthcare occupation at community college. The healthcare industry is the second largest in the state and healthcare support and technical occupations are in great demand.
The state’s financial support would cover two years, the length of the academic programs, and include childcare and tuition, leading barriers to single mothers completing their education at community colleges, according to a study by the Women’s Foundation of Mississippi and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research that surveyed over 500 students from 13 of Mississippi’s 15 community colleges.
The top 10 occupations associated with a middle income are cardiovascular technologists, diagnostic medical sonographers, exercise physiologists, health information technologists, licensed practical and vocational nurses, occupational therapy assistants, radiologic technologists, respiratory therapy technicians, nuclear medicine technologists, magnetic resonance imaging technologists, physical therapist assistants and surgical technologists. Those healthcare careers have an average annual entry level salary of $40,050 and $61,742 for experienced workers.
State leaders have fought endlessly about Medicaid as though it is the absolute solution to our problems; however, poverty driven by low paying jobs is the real culprit. To that end, Medicaid should be a short-term experience for single mothers, who make up a considerable portion of households in the state. Putting a program in place to ensure they obtain a marketable occupation in healthcare will lead to a middle-income status, lifting them out of poverty and off Medicaid.
— Getty Israel is an MPH population health specialist of Jackson.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Moving single MS mothers from Medicaid to middle income
