Walter Michel
Senator J. Walter Michel represents District 25 and also serves as the chairman for the Senate Insurance Committee. Many of his accomplishments in the 2022 Legislative Session revolved around this committee and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and he hopes to see more bills come from these two areas in 2023.
This year, the insurance committee has a piece of legislation they are working on called Prior Authorization. Currently, if a person in Mississippi needs a medical procedure, the insurance company wants the doctor to pre-authorize the procedure before they’ll agree to pay for it. This can cause delays in getting the patient that procedure. The committee is working to allow doctors who have a very successful rate with certain procedures to receive “a gold card status,” which means they won’t have to get prior approval with the insurance company before they do the procedure.
“The doctor has the right to go ahead and do the procedure and be reimbursed by the health insurance plan, and the insurance company still has the right at the end of the six months to audit all of the operations that were done to see if there was one or two that might have been done,” Michel said. “It streamlines the process and speeds it up.”
Michel said another thing they will be working on as part of the state health plan is working with Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney on legislation that will right the disagreements between Blue Cross and the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
“Chaney is leading the fight on that, and he’s got some ideas that he might need legislative help with. We’re waiting on him to give us an idea of what we can do legislatively.”
However Michel’s main focus in the 2023 session will be creating a form of income tax rebate for taxpayers in addition to excess funds being directed towards infrastructure needs and flooding priorities.
“It’s no secret that the state is running quite a surplus right now in excess funds,” Michel said. “I’m going to introduce the income tax holiday bill that I did last year, which would be a 20 percent tax credit. When you fill out your taxes and you get down to the bottom line, if it says you owe $1,000, you get 20 percent off of that amount.”
Michel said income taxes in Mississippi amount to about $2 billion a year, and 20 percent of that would be about a $400 million savings to the taxpayers.
“We have over triple that amount in the bank right now in our rainy day fund and our reserves, so that would keep plenty of money available for other needs – from our universities to recurring maintenance issues,” Michel said. “We also have $350 million left in the ARPA fund, and I was placed as the lieutenant governor on that committee in the Senate. We’re going to look now at how we could spend $350 million to help high growth areas. Jackson sure has great needs, and I’ll be going to bat for the Metro Jackson area for that.”
Michel also plans to build off of one of his 2022 bills. In 2022, legislators made it to where when the state treasurer advertises unclaimed property, such as inheritance or a closed bank account with money still in it, and people are supposed to go see if their name is on the list, the treasurer now first compares the list of names with those who owe child support.
“If their name is found on that list, they would remit that money for any child support services money that’s due before they remit the balance to the person,” Michel said. “So, if there’s a deadbeat dad and they find out they had $3,000 of unclaimed property, then whatever they owed would be passed to child support to be paid and then they get the difference.”
Michel will introduce a similar bill this year that will do the same thing with game winnings in a casino.
“If someone wins the jackpot at a casino, then the casino would check the person’s human services database to see if that person owes any child support,” Michel said. “That money would be permitted to the department of human services and their balance after that of the jackpot would be distributed to the person. This will make sure they pay their obligations first before they get their winnings.”
In the previous legislative session, Michel said legislators set up a program to allow municipalities to put their money they received from the federal government for ARPA projects and the state would match the amount.
“The municipalities in the area did really well on that,” Michel said. “Madison County got $20.6 million, and we’re matching part of that. The City of Madison got $6.3 million, Ridgeland got 5.9 million, and we’ve offered to match that dollar for dollar. Jackson had approximately $40 million that they’re gonna spend that we’re gonna match. That was a really good victory for the state to spend some of our portion of money to match the municipalities’ monies and the counties’ monies.”
On the insurance committee, legislation was able to allow adults under the age of 21 to get hearing aids on the health insurance plan, which was previously prohibited.
“It took a year-long study but we found out that it’s a learning hindrance to not be able to hear well, and this money that we spend on hearing aids makes up more than what we would lose out on a child not getting educated properly,” Michel said.
The committee also passed a telemedicine bill after covid revealed how important it is to be able to get medical help without having to enter a waiting room, whether that be to avoid coming into contact with sick individuals or because you live in a rural area.
“The telemedicine bill will allow the doctor to get a specialist on the line through the use of the cellular phone or from a desktop computer and allow the doctors to be reimbursed by the insurance companies for the telemedicine visit,” Michel said. “The main hindrance was the fact that previously they were not going to get the health insurance payment for telemedicine visits. We passed legislation that would allow that to occur.”
Finally, Michel also wants to continue to help Madison County get funding for the infrastructure items on their wish list.
“We’ve gotten money for them in the past several years for Stribling Road to be widened, and they’re gonna come with that request this year again, so I’m gonna see if I can get some bond money or just overall outright appropriation for money for the Reunion and Stribling Road projects,” Micheal said. “That would be a great help if we get that Reunion Interchange built in relieving the traffic in that Madison and Gluckstadt area and getting traffic to get on and off the interstate without clogging up the Highway 463 interchange. I’ll be looking to get funds for that as well.”
Bo Brown
District 70 Rep. William “Bo” Brown plans to vote in favor of Medicaid expansion during the 2023 legislative session but that’s not all.
“I have two or three things I’m going to push this year,” he said. “One is expanding internet access, which can be weak in some areas of Hinds County and other parts of the state. The internet impacts and enhances education.
“I’m still interested in getting civics taught in schools. Civics deals with government. Civics deals with religion. Civics deals with human nature. Civics teaches how to get along with people. I’m going to push that again.”
Brown would like to see Medicaid expanded, which is expected to be a top issue facing the 2023 session. Expansion would provide coverage for between 150,000 and 300,000 Mississippians.
“Not only has the governor not been for it but my colleagues and friends on the Republican side have not been for it,” he said, explaining that Medicaid expansion would show compassion for the state’s poorest citizens.
Brown would also like more mental health services to be available to former inmates.
“We don’t have enough (hospital) beds and resources put into mental health,” he said.
Providing mental health services for people who need it would be helpful and could have an impact on crime, he said.
Brown was among legislature who pushed for funding for the city of Jackson so repairs could be made to the failing water system, but he doesn’t expect that to be necessary this session.
“We’ve been told the water situation is going to be taken care of with the money coming from the feds,” he said. “We’ve met with Ted Henifin (the third-party manager of the city’s water system) and he assured us that’s one thing the Legislature is not going to have to put funds into.”
Brown believes the Capitol Police force, which was expanded last year, is sufficiently funded but could benefit from more oversight.
“I think we’ve funded them properly,” he said. “We’ve had too many incidents (involving Capitol Police) that could have been prevented.
“We provided funding for Capitol Police to pick up nearly 100 officers. I think that’s pretty good for the area in which they have jurisdiction. We need to make sure they stay within their jurisdiction.”
Last year, the Legislature passed bills to expand the Capitol Police force, extend its jurisdiction and move the department under the Mississippi Department of Public Safety. The measures were meant to help the city of Jackson and Jackson Police Department combat crime.
Brown said he will follow the lead of Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann should a tax cut come up for vote. “We did a tax cut last year, and I don’t know if we need to do another one this session,” he said.
A former Jackson City Council member whose district includes Belhaven and Belhaven Heights, Brown earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Tennessee State University and a master’s degree in public policy and administration from Jackson State University and has done post-graduate study in urban affairs at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, Calif.
He said being a member of the Legislature requires constant learning and listening and the job comes with both satisfaction and frustration.
“I love it because it can produce some satisfaction but there’s a degree of frustration,” he said. “We do too many things according to party lines. I don’t think we need to deal with party lines but we should deal with people’s needs.”
Brown said he considers himself a public servant and not a politician and welcomes communication with his constituents. “I’m there to do the people’s business,” he said.
He may be reached at bbrown@house.ms.gov or bbsoul@yahoo.com or 601-366-4774.
