TPA Sends Letter to Mississippi Officials Urging Needed Reforms to Medicaid Contracts

For Immediate Release                                                Contact: Abigail Graham: (202) 417-7235

December 2, 2022                                                    

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) sent a letter to Mississippi state officials urging them to reform the procurement process for Mississippi’s Medicaid program.

As TPA outlines in the letter, Mississippi’s Medicaid Program has awarded, “$6.2 billion in state Medicaid management contracts to three separate entities, despite historical records of waste, fraud, and abuse from almost all entities involved.” Mississippians deserve transparency and accountability from their local government to ensure their taxpayer dollars are being properly and efficiently spent for programs statewide.

In response, Dan Savickas of TPA, offered the following comment:

“Millions of Americans are feeling the economic pinch due to historic inflation and reckless government spending. It’s up to state and local officials to ensure that its tax dollars are being efficiently and appropriately spent.

“TPA urges these state officials to take a long and hard look at the state procurement process which has unfortunately become a severely flawed system. The ‘blind’ nature of the process is routinely violated, allowing contracts to be awarded not on merit, but based on who is most politically connected. This leads to costly losses of taxpayer dollars.

“Nearly three-quarters of a million Mississippi residents are enrolled in either Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). As large contracts in the amount of $6.2 billion have been awarded to different entities with a history of waste and abuse, the brokenness of the procurement process certainly ought to be a concerning issue for Mississippians across the state.”

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Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to educating the public through the research, analysis and dissemination of information on the government’s effects on the economy.