Weight-Loss Surgeries May be Funded by Mississippi

The Senate of the Mississippi said that the obesity rate of the state is highest in the nation and it is assumed that the government is planning to fund to citizens who need weight-loss surgeries to decrease obesity rates.

Sen. Steve Holland said, “The idea of funding these surgeries began when the Mississippi House and Senate investigated the State Board of Health and the medical situation in Mississippi. There was a movement that started in August to fully review the State Board of Health. It was a Senate initiative that eventually made its way to the House of Representatives."

He added, “The Senate did a review of the Board of Health and saw things that needed to be changed. The review instigated a series of hearings which determined what would happen to Mississippi's health care system.”

He added, “We had to revamp it no matter what. Extensive hearings, even volumes of hearings, determined that the State Board of Health was in a state of disarray with problems ranging from West Nile, infant mortality and obesity.”


He added, “The Senate has taken the first big step in solving the state's obesity problem by ordering an investigation in which Medicaid would review the benefits of state-funded weight-loss procedures. We are currently in the largest per-capita percent of our citizens that are morbidly obese.”

He also added, “We just mandated that the division of Medicaid would bring us back a study on obesity as well as the economic effects of possibly funding weight-loss surgeries. Although state-funded weight-loss surgeries will be considered soon, the Senate's current mission is to investigate the state's high rate of obesity and its economic effects.”