Medicaid cuts put on hold pending alternative plan|[07/31/08]

Published 12:00 am Thursday, July 31, 2008

From staff reports

Word that Mississippi Medicaid officials have rescinded $375 million in cuts that might have gone into effect next week was greeted with pleasure by Vicksburg’s senior delegate to the Legislature.

“It’s nice that the governor is following me for a change,” said state Rep. George Flaggs, D-Vicksburg.

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Flaggs has consistently voted with the leadership and long said the state’s tax on tobacco is too low, saying Barbour’s rationale for opposing the tobacco tax is unsupportable.

“There’s no way he could justify taxing sick people and not taxing the product that makes people sick,” Flaggs said today.

Rep. Steve Holland, D-Plantersville, chairman of the House Public Health Committee, told The Associated Press he hasn’t seen a letter reportedly written by Medicaid director Robert Robinson to the attorney general’s office. The letter is believed to say that while state law directs the governor to make cuts when state funding for Medicaid is insufficient, the cuts Barbour announced two weeks ago