Thread by @ashtonpittman

Tate Reeves is sending out mailers tying GOP runoff opponent Bill Waller to Barack Obama. Two things:
1. Reeves has been accused of using mailers to race-bait before.
2. The bullet points either mislead or falsely characterize Waller’s Medicaid expansion plan. #MSelex
🧵👇🏻

Reeves slaps the giant “Obamacare” across the mailer next to a photo of Bill Waller, suggesting he supports the former black president’s overall health law. He does not.

Waller supports a conservative Medicaid expansion plan similar to what GOP VP Mike Pence did in Indiana. 👇🏻

Now, the current mailer. It says Waller’s plan would cost MS $200m/yr. But in 2015, the MS IHL estimated expansion would cost $159mn/yr by 2025 if 95% of those eligible enrolled.

But under Waller’s plan, the state pays $0. 👇🏻
jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/aug/…

Waller’s version of Medicaid expansion funds the state’s part of the cost (the federal gov’t has already agreed to pay 90% of Mississippi’s Medicaid expansion costs) with limited fees for recipients, including $20 monthly premiums. Hospitals will swallow the rest (their idea). 👇🏻

Reeves’ claim that Bill Waller’s plan would cost $200m a year are, in other words, false, & rely on an inflated estimate of straightforward Medicaid expansion.

But Bill Waller’s plan, written by the MS Hospital Assocc, calls for $0 in state funds. 👇🏻
jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/may/…

Reeves’ mailers offers no evidence for its claim that Medicaid expansion would drive up health costs, nor that it‘d cause people to lose their insurance.

The 300,000 who would be affected by Medicaid expansion are in working poor households who currently have no insurance. 👇🏻

Tate Reeves claims @BillWallerMS’ Medicaid reform would cause health care costs to rise and people to lose their private health insurance. He claims this happened in Louisiana.

But after Louisiana expanded Medicaid in 2016, its uninsured rate dropped 50% over a 5-yr period. 👇🏻

Meanwhile, even as Louisiana’s uninsured rate dropped, states that did not expand Medicaid, like Mississippi and Alabama, saw uninsured rates rise.

Again, what is @TateReeves talking about?

Additionally: Louisiana has not seen a single rural hospital close since it expanded Medicaid.

Five have closed in Mississippi, and 31 are in danger.

Hospital groups say Medicaid expansion would save those hospitals.

Other non-expansion states also have hospitals closing. 👇🏻

In other words, what Tate Reeves is sending out on these mailers are just plain lies, potentially using a very selective set of undisclosed facts in very misleading ways.

The teases his health plans: Give tax breaks to physicians to locate to rural areas & to businesses. 👇🏻

Those plans for tax “incentives” for physicians helped earn Reeves the support of a physicians’ PAC that calls itself the “I.V. League.” (Get it?) 👇🏻jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/aug/…

Tidbit: In 2003, when Tate Reeves ran for Mississippi Treasurer against Gary Anderson, a far more qualified black Democrat, some accused Republicans of using mailers showing Anderson’s face to dogwhistle to white Dem voters (MS had far more then). 👇🏻
jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/mar/…

Tidbit #2: Look what happened to the share of opioid hospitalizations of uninsured people in states that expanded vs those that did not.

One of the biggest financial burdens on rural hospitals is emergency hospitalizations of uninsured people who can’t pay.

Special shoutout to @endmoronism for sending these my way!