As Mississippi fights for abortion ban, doctors push to expand Medicaid for new moms

One change that the state’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee advocated in 2019 was to allow women to keep their Medicaid health insurance coverage for a year after they give birth, rather than being cut off after 60 days, which is the current policy. Dr. Charlene Collier, an OB-GYN practicing in Mississippi’s capital and co-chair of the Maternal Mortality Review Committee, is still waiting for that potentially lifesaving measure to be adopted.“In Mississippi, there’s been a lot of focus on the issues of abortion and restricting that, but there’s no commensurate efforts to improve birth outcomes for pregnant women and babies in the state,” she said. Almost two-thirds of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Mississippi is one of 12 states that have not expanded Medicaid access under the Affordable Care Act, which would offer another pathway for women in poverty to gain health insurance coverage. “Sometimes, I am diagnosing things for the first time in pregnancy,” said Dr. Nina Ragunanthan, an OB-GYN based in the Mississippi Delta.One of her patients developed preeclampsia in pregnancy and later required close care for severe depression, which the patient was able to receive because of the temporary Medicaid extension under the federal Covid-19 emergency.