The Mississippi Legislature’s desire to spend $103 million to soften the state’s hospital crisis has so far been a case of mostly good intentions.
Almost six months after Gov. Tate Reeves signed the legislation authorizing the expenditure, not a single penny of the supposed “emergency” money has been disbursed to the state’s financially ailing hospitals.
That’s because the Legislature, despite sitting on a surplus of about $3.6 billion, messed up by trying to be too miserly with the state’s money.
Rather than cover the expenditure with unfettered state money, lawmakers opted to be clever and fund the program with federal American Rescue Plan Act funds. They should have known that source came with many more strings attached.
One of those, according to the Mississippi State Health Department, is that the hospitals cannot be reimbursed for expenditures or losses for which they’ve already received federal pandemic relief funds. Or as State Health Office Dr. Daniel Edney put it, “You can’t double-dip.”
The Health Department, the agency in charge of evaluating the hospitals’ grant applications and disbursing the money, says that half of the hospitals that have applied so far are ineligible for the money because of the ARPA constraints.
Greenwood Leflore Hospital is not among the disqualified, according to Gary Marchand, the hospital’s interim CEO. But it still hasn’t gotten its million-dollar check, apparently because Edney is uncertain what the legislative leadership wants him to do. Does he wait until the funding problem is fixed, as legislative leaders say they will tend to when the Legislature convenes again in January? Or does he disburse what he can now?
If you ask us, that’s an easy call. Disburse now.
Some of these struggling hospitals are scraping now to make payroll. They need all the cash flow they can get.
It makes no sense to ask everyone to unduly wait because legislators picked the wrong pot of money, or because Edney and his aides didn’t sound the alarm loudly enough when lawmakers were crafting the bill or when Gov. Tate Reeves waited to sign it.
Help whatever hospitals can legally be funded now, and hope that those put on hold have enough reserves to wait until someone figures out a workaround or the Legislature returns to Jackson in a few months.
Other than calling a special session, which Reeves has not been asked to do, there’s not much other choice.
