Vote Smart's Synopsis:

Vote to pass a bill altering Medicaid and Medicare eligibility requirements and benefits, and increasing taxes on cigarettes.

Highlights:

- Provides that children born after September 30, 1983, below the age of 19, with family income that does not exceed 200% of the nonfarm official poverty level may be eligible for Medicaid [sec 3(9)(a)]. - Stipulates that transplant patients will not have time spent in transplant care against their 30 days of inpatient hospital care annually allocated by Medicaid [sec. 4 (1)(a)]. - Provides that Medicaid will reimburse pregnant women for preterm labor management services if they meet certain at-risk criteria [sec.4 (42)(b)]. Implements a program that allows for a portion of the money used for nursing facility services to be transferred to fund home- and community-based services [sec. 5 (1)]. - Provides that any person who knowingly makes a false record or statement to conceal, avoid, or decrease an obligation to pay or transmit money or property to the State of Mississippi will be penalized no less than $5,000 and no more than $10,000, plus three times the amount of damages that the state sustains because of the act [sec 16 (2)(g)]. - Levies an excise tax of 5¢ on each cigarette sold with a maximum length of 120 mm; any cigarette in excess of this length shall be taxed as if it were two or more cigarettes [sec. 19 (1)(b)]. - Allocates 10% of the revenue collected from the cigarette excise tax revenue to the Mississippi Trauma Care Systems Fund [sec. 20 (2)(a)]. - Allocates 90% of the revenue collected from the cigarette excise tax to the credit of the Governor's office's' Division of Medicaid [sec. 20 (2)(b)]. - Provides that the levied excise tax on cigarettes will take effect on June 1, 2008 and the rest of the provisions of the bill will take effect on July 1, 2008 (sec. 21). Substitute offered by House Medicaid and Ways and Means Committees on 02/21/2008

Full Bill Text