Mississippians share stories of unaffordable healthcare as national campaign comes to Jackson
By Anna Hu | Originally published by Mississippi Today
As Jacksonians gathered at the public green space of Smith Park Wednesday, they connected over rising healthcare costs, enjoyed free food and live music and plugged into the “One Nation, Overcharged” national campaign network.
The healthcare affordability campaign is an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health policy nonprofit research organization. Several state groups co-sponsored the block party styled event, including the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP, the health-oriented Care4Mississippi Coalition, Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, Mississippi Urban League and a maternal health group, Six Dimensions.
Early Wednesday, members of the Urban League tucked campaign pamphlets into blue cotton bags filled with canned goods and fruits during their monthly food distribution. Then, volunteers headed over to Smith Park to talk with 150 registered attendees.
The healthcare rally drew the interest of people from different walks of life. Office workers strolled through the event during their lunch break. College students looked up resources and grabbed plates of catfish from food trucks that served over 200 meals during the event. Some visitors, like longtime Jackson resident Dorothy Triplett, were invited by friends.
At 87 years old, the retired civic advocate said she is still physically active and volunteers with community organizing groups. From the One Nation, Overcharged community participation table, she chose a large yellow sticker to inscribe her frustrations with the healthcare system. A volunteer helped her add the sticker to the growing board of local voices.
“People on Medicaid don’t have equal access to excellent care,” she wrote, punctuated with several exclamation points. Triplett knows, she said, because of how her son has struggled to obtain care in California.
“Healthcare is in need of CPR,” she told Mississippi Today.
Cassandra Welchin, executive director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, said her conversations at the event reinforced the importance of advocating for more affordable healthcare nationwide.
She said she spoke to one woman who couldn’t afford paying $1,000 a month for her prescription and was instead waiting until her checkups to collect samples, which last about a month.
“She goes like two months at a time without the prescription because her insurance won’t cover it,” Welchin said. “And she said the cost is just too expensive.”
Welchin hopes people who attended the block party will push Mississippi lawmakers to expand Medicaid.
“The state of Mississippi really needs to care about what families are going through and not play politics with people’s lives,” she said.
As coverage shrinks, costs loom larger
Expanding Medicaid would give Mississippians more health insurance options as premiums increase for plans in the Affordable Care Act Marketplace.
Those rising costs may be linked to people losing coverage. For the first time in over a decade at the Mississippi Insurance Department, Life and Health Actuarial Division Director Bob Williams is seeing the number of people covered by Marketplace plans go down.
After COVID-19-era subsidies that reduced health premiums expired in December, around 200,000 Mississippians lost their Marketplace coverage, Williams said. From a peak of about 335,000 people enrolled in 2025, he estimates around 125,000 are still making payments as of August.
Those numbers may continue to drop. Williams said enrollees in the ACA Marketplace can expect to see an average rate increase of 18% next year, depending on their carrier and plan.
The jump may be tough to handle for Mississippians like Madison-based poet Steven Randle, who performed a healthcare-oriented spoken word piece under the domed Smith Park stage. In it, he reflected on his childhood fear of doctors, with their sharp needles and strange chalky medicines. Now, he’s afraid of how much their services cost.
After leaving his public policy career to pursue poetry full time last year, Randle realized the prices for individual healthcare plans are “astronomical.” To manage the costs, he said he tried to ignore his pain, including flare-ups from an old hip injury and severe migraines.
Randle recently took on a new job solely for the health insurance benefit. But some costs, including the screenings he’s hoping to get due to a family history of cancer, still come out of pocket.
“That’s a fear of mine,” he said. “It’s not only just if they say yes. It’s also, will I be able to afford to live?”
This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Source: Original Article
