“Georgia’s recognition as the No. 1 state for Best Business Climate by Site Selection is a testament to our partnership approach to job creation and economic growth.”—Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (Jan. 8, 2025).
By Jack Bernard, contributing columnist
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. | Let me agree that Georgia is one of the best states for business. But it is also one of the worst for health care delivery and coverage.
A recent Fortune column lists the top hospitals in the USA, including both teaching and community. Over 2,500 facilities were recently ranked via “data.” The study estimated that if the best practices these hospitals used were employed in all American facilities for just Medicare patients, there would be a savings of over $15 billion annually for Department of Health and Human Services.
It should disturb our governor, who likes to brag about his successes, that not one of these hospitals of any size was located here in Georgia. Especially when we examine the specific, objective criteria and used-clinical outcomes, operational efficiency, patient experience, and financial health. Thus, the ranking accounted for a wide array of factors such as mortality/morbidity, readmissions, inpatient charges, and inpatient satisfaction.
Further, we have had nine rural hospitals close in the last few years, plus the Atlanta Medical Center, a 460-bed facility which had been bought by Wellstar (a Georgia based non-profit system). But then Wellstar closed his hospital without regard to the pain this would inflict on lower income Georgians, pushing even more patients into overburdened Grady Hospital.
Although Governor Kemp fails to acknowledge the fact, Georgia politicians like him care little about the health status of the state’s citizens. Per Emory professor Dr. Whitney Rice, poor health status is because of “…structural and social conditions in our state, which include significant challenges accessing quality reproductive health care, systemic racial inequalities, and policy.” When is the last time Kemp discussed the negative effects of his health policy decisions?
With 1.25 million Georgians uninsured, our state has the third largest number of uninsured residents in the nation. Because of Kemp’s opposition to full Medicaid expansion, he has directly and willfully caused this dire situation, harming some of our poorest citizens. Specifically, he created and has pushed a very unsuccessful and costly ACA Medicaid “waiver” called Pathways. Kemp said Pathways would cover 100,000-200,000 Georgians. But only 4,300 are enrolled. One source found that 400,000 more state residents would get coverage if Georgia simply had normal Medicaid expansion.
Plus, because it has reduced the federal Medicaid match from 90 percent to 66 percent, Pathways has cost the state a tremendous amount of money.
In any case, Georgia has a budget surplus of $16 billion. Expanding Medicaid would only have cost us $143 million annually, while creating many jobs. Another easy solution, and a healthy one, would be to increase Georgia’s cigarette taxes, the second lowest in the nation, to cover the cost.
Meanwhile, Georgia also has some of the nation’s worst maternal and infant morbidity and mortality rates. And, under Kemp, their healthcare has gotten worse. The maternal and infant death rate increased by nearly a third between 2018 and 2021.
To conclude, short-term Georgia must do a much better job in health care financing and delivery. The long-term solution to coverage is national single payer health care (traditional Medicare for All), which would bring down expenditures and cover all citizens as in all other major democracies.
Until this happens, as medical lobbyists strongly oppose it, we must still make progress by seeing to it that the least powerful Georgians get the health care they need.
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