As Republicans in Congress negotiate the president's policy agenda, including potential cuts and changes to Medicaid, states are preparing for the impacts on their health care programs and their budgets.

That includes Mississippi, where nearly 700,000 residents, more than half of them children, are enrolled in Medicaid.

I discussed that and more with Mississippi's

Republican Governor Tate Reeves earlier today. Governor Reeves, welcome back to the News Hour.

Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me on. So your state lawmakers just ended a very

tough battle in a special session to pass a $7 billion state budget. As part of that, you increased

your state Medicaid funding by over 6.5% to almost a billion dollars total. Tell us about that.

Is any of that in anticipation of potential federal cuts to Medicaid ahead?

No, actually, the reason that it was increased was goes back to the pandemic

level funding. If you may recall, the Congress made the decision that when the pandemic was

in effect, that our federal match rate actually went from 76.9 percent to 82.9 percent So the reduction back to 82.9 to 76.9 is going to lead to a

larger share of our overall Medicaid program being expended by state government rather than the

federal government. So this is something that's been in the making for a couple of years,

and we'll probably continue to see increased spending with that program. Although, I will tell

you, it's been curtailed because our economy is going so well right now that we're actually

seeing fewer and fewer of our citizens dependent upon Medicaid and other government programs.

So in all the conversation around those potential cuts, is it safe to say that you don't

anticipate anyone of the hundreds of thousands of Medicaid recipients in Mississippi to be

impacted by the federal government changes?

Well, certainly none that are eligible.

Mississippi is one of the 10 states in America who have chosen not to expand under

Obamacare. And so many of the work requirements and other things that the federal government

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