How earning $30 too much a month keeps a cancer patient in Georgia from cheaper care
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/30/nx-s1-4964730/georgia-medicaid-expansion-coverage-gap-kemp
How earning $30 too much a month keeps a cancer patient in Georgia from cheaper care
JUNE 3, 2024 5:00 AM ET
By Obed Manuel, A Martinez, Milton Guevara, Adam Bearne
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Georgia is one of 10, mostly southern and GOP-led states, that have not expanded Medicaid to cover more people under President Barack Obamas signature law, the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The other states are Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Kansas, Wyoming and Wisconsin.
Democrat Stacey Abrams made Medicaids expansion a key issue in her two failed attempts to win the Georgia governors seat, losing out both times to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who has insisted he will not expand the program. And recently, President Joe Biden has been attacking Donald Trump over his attempts to repeal Obamacare, hoping the issue will galvanize voters as he scraps for votes in battleground states.
So why has Georgia rebuffed Medicaid expansion?
At his budget signing in early May, surrounded by local and national reporters, Gov. Kemp said that expanding Medicaid will take people off of their private sector insurance and put them on the government-run health care. That is going to cost more money in the short term, more money in the long term. So to me that does not make good budgeting sense to do that.
Instead, Kemp introduced Georgia Pathways to Coverage last July, which he referred to as a conservative Medicaid expansion, a plan done under a waiver in the ACA. Former President Donald Trump signed off on it while in office in 2020.
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