Mississippi health insurance

---

status report:
Mississippi state health insurance exchange

What progress is being made in setting up its federally-mandated Mississippi state health insurance exchange?"

About state health insurance exchanges

---

How did Mississippi officials vote on health reform?

H.R.2: Repealing the Health Care Bill

#14

Date of Vote: 1/19/2011 Status: House passed 245-189, 1 not voting

HOUSE|SENATE

1/19/2011--Passed House amended. Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act - Repeals the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, effective as of its enactment. Restores provisions of law amended by such Act. Repeals the health care provisions of the Health Care and Education and Reconciliation Act of 2010, effective as of the Act's enactment. Restores provisions of law amended by the Act's health care provisions. [more]

Yes (3)

• Gregg Harper

• Alan Nunnelee

• Steven Palazzo

Our
Pick

No (1)

• Bennie Thompson

how healthy is living in Mississippi?

Mississippi is ranked as the 50th healthiest state to live in, according to the 2010 America's Health Rankings® by the United Health Foundation, and has remained as such since 2002.

The good news:

• Mississippi has one of the lowest rates of binge drinking in the nation.
• It also has relatively high rates of immunization coverage (91.6 percent) and public health care funding ($77 per individual).
• Also included in Mississippi's strengths are moderate rates of violent crime and infectious disease, the latter of which fell to 17.2 cases per 100,000 members of the population in the past ten years.

The bad news:

• Mississippi ranks in last place in five categories; prevalence of obesity (which has increased over the past five years to 35.3 percent of the overall population), children in poverty (which increased over the past year from 23.5 to 31.9 percent of the population under the age of 18), infant mortality, deaths due to cardiovascular disease, and premature death.
• Mississippi is among the bottom five states in 11 of the 22 measures used to rank the health of a state.
• Other challenges Mississippi faces are a low high school graduation rate, a high rate of preventable hospitalizations, and a low availability of primary care physicians.

Mississippi's best and worst category rankings:

• Prevalence of binge drinking – 4th
• Prevalence of obesity – 50th
• Children in poverty – 50th
• Infant mortality – 50th
• Deaths due to cardiovascular disease – 50th
• Premature death – 50th

more details

• See the United Health Foundation's latest findings on Mississippi.
• Trust for America's Health ia another source for key Mississippi health quality findings. In addition, 2010's federal health reform, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), included the creation of a prevention fund to provide more than $16 billion over the next 10 years to invest in effective, proven prevention efforts, like childhood obesity prevention and tobacco cessation, and the site has a report on how it impacts Mississippi here.

get local health results

State snapshot too large? Get county-by-county health rankings for Mississippi, from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Population Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin.

does Mississippi have a health insurance high risk pool?

Mississippi Comprehensive Health Insurance Risk Pool
Toll-free 1-888-820-9400

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Starting in 2010, Mississippi started offering health care insurance coverage to residents through the federally established temporary high-risk pool program. To find out more about Mississippi's participation, click here.

Risk pools are state-sponsored programs to help people with a history of medical problems in their family to purchase coverage. These pools are for people who can afford to buy health insurance, but are not able to get underwritten in the private market because of a pre-existing health condition. These programs can vary significantly from state to state in price, benefits and number of people served. Often insurance companies doing business in the state are required to contribute to the pool to keep it in the black. In the best cases, they allow people to be able to switch jobs or become self-employed without the fear of losing their health insurance coverage. Read more about risk pools here.

how to find health insurance in Mississippi

Cover The Uninsured is a national effort to highlight the fact that too many Americans are living without health insurance and to demand solutions from our nation's leaders. Read more information on its efforts. It is a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

• Cover The Uninsured's facts on the uninsured in Mississippi and all other states.
• The Foundation for Health Coverage Education's guide on how to find health insurance in Mississippi.
• Materiales En Español – Guías para encontrar cobertura de seguro de salud.

Georgetown's Mississippi health insurance guide

Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute has researched and written state-by-state guides for finding and keeping health insurance. It updates these guides as federal and state policies change. A number of non-profit organizations help fund its research. Learn more about the Health Policy Institute.

Review Georgetown's guide for Mississippi.

Health insurance plan report cards for Mississippi

The National Committee for Quality Assurance is a private, non-profit organization that, among other things, provides health care plan report cards for consumers.

Go here to search for Mississippi health insurance plan report cards.

Mississippi government health insurance resources

Mississippi Insurance Department –consumer information page – links of interest to the state's health care consumers.

Mississippi Division of Medicaid – helping the state's lowest income individuals and families.

MO CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Plan) – designed to provide health care insurance for children in families without health insurance or with inadequate health insurance. It does not replace Medicaid; in fact, children on Medicaid are precluded from CHIP participation.