Department heads across state agencies began outlining their spending priorities this week in joint budgetary hearings hosted by the Georgia Senate and General Assembly.

During the hearings, department heads broke down Gov. Brian Kemp’s latest budget report, which amends some spending for the upcoming fiscal year starting July 1 and sets recommendations for fiscal year 2027.

Funding for the state’s four main departments of health made up nearly 40% of expenditures last year. That doesn’t change much in the governor’s new budget despite some mounting challenges.  …

At an annual event hosted by the nonprofit health advocacy group Georgians for a Healthy Future, state Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones II said the biggest challenge facing the state’s health care system is the expiration of Affordable Care Act-enhanced premium tax credits.

One estimate from the Georgia Health Initiative projects an additional 460,000 people in the state could become uninsured by 2034 because of the loss of enhanced premium tax credit and other provisions of House Resolution 1, also known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Jones and other senate Democrats filed a bill last week to create a series of state-funded subsidies and cost-sharing reductions administered under the Office of Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner to help people afford plans through Georgia Access.

ATLANTA (WJBF) — Lawmakers at the Georgia State Capitol are facing renewed calls this legislative session to expand healthcare access and lower costs for residents across the state, particularly in rural communities.

Healthcare advocates say improving access is critical to preventing rural hospital closures, addressing staffing shortages, and reducing the number of uninsured Georgians.

Nonprofit groups like Georgians for a Healthy Future argue that rural areas continue to struggle with limited access to care, including hospitals shutting down key services such as labor and delivery units.

“Georgia has a huge issue with access to care in rural parts of the state,” said Whittney Griggs, director of health policy for Georgians for a Healthy Future. “Hospitals are closing service lines and struggling just to keep their doors open.”

Without those subsidies, thousands are now paying higher premiums, and some are choosing to go without coverage altogether.

Open enrollment for 2026 Affordable Care Act health coverage ends next week, and Georgia residents are bracing for increased premiums and limited affordable coverage options compared to last year.

Advocates predict that premiums in Georgia could jump as high as 75% on average, and that Black Georgians, who face higher uninsured rates than white residents, will be disproportionately impacted by these changes.

“We do know that Black Georgians are over-represented among marketplace enrollments, and so as costs go up for those marketplace plans, Black Georgians will be hit first and hardest,” said Laura Colbert, executive director of Georgians for a Healthy Future.

These changes in coverage come as a result of Congress choosing to not extend enhanced ACA subsidies, also known as enhanced premium tax credits, at the end of 2025. For those who qualified, the tax credits helped bring down the cost of ACA premiums.

It’s a new year at the Gold Dome, though technically it’s really the start of the tail end of the two-year biennium. So happy half new year in Georgia politics?

Here are some of the key dates and events to know as we roll into the new year (and we’ll keep updating this list as more dates firm up):

Jan. 15: Gov. Brian Kemp will deliver his final State of the State address at the Capitol at 11 a.m. This will be where the governor outlines his priorities for his last legislative session.

Jan. 15: Georgians for a Healthy Future hold their policy-packed Health Care Unscrambled event at the Georgia Freight Depot. This year, the keynote speaker is Katie Keith, who is the founding director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. Tickets are available here.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that there would not be a House vote on extending the subsidies. Four Republicans, however, defected from the GOP and signed on to a discharge petition to force a vote on the subsidies. GOP leadership in the House, along with Johnson, will ultimately decide when the vote happens. As of press time, the measure had not made it to the floor.

The U.S. Senate last week failed to advance a plan to address increasing health care premium costs due to expiring subsidies on Affordable Care Act plans.

The subsidies initially were part of a 2021 law and later were extended through the end of 2025 by the Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law by then-President Joe Biden in 2022.

The ACA, also known as Obamacare, has drawn ire from the Republican party since its inception and passage in 2010. Since then, Republicans in Congress and President Donald Trump have advocated for repealing and replacing the legislation, though no consensus has been reached on an ACA replacement.

Georgia currently uses an alternative website for what’s known as “The Marketplace” — a federal website for selecting health care plans. Georgia’s site is called Georgia Access and is run by the state, as opposed to the federal government. It launched last fall. According to Georgians for a Healthy Future, the state marketplace hosts two insurance companies that were suspended from the federal marketplace for alleged fraud.

Monday was the deadline to buy health insurance that starts in January on the Affordable Care Act marketplace. But unlike many other states, it’s not too late for Georgia residents, who have until Jan. 15 to sign up for coverage that begins Feb. 1.

That’s because Georgia runs its own ACA marketplace exchange, GeorgiaAccess.gov. About 1.3 million people are enrolled in Georgia Access…

Georgians for a Healthy Future was formerly a navigator organization and now has a certified assistant. It has limited hours in Byron, Georgia at 470-654-5509.

Georgians with Affordable Care Act health insurance are evaluating their options as open enrollment winds down for plans beginning Jan. 1, 2026.

A majority of the roughly 1.5 million Georgians with coverage in the state would be affected if enhanced premium tax credits that have made Marketplace plans more affordable since 2021 expire at the end of the year…

“Everyone has been calling because around Nov. 1, they have received their letters letting them know what their premium costs will be going up to,” says Deanna Williams, Enrollment Assister with the nonprofit Georgians for a Healthy Future, part of the state’s Certified Application Counselor (CAC) program.

Williams says she’s heard from dozens of people from around the state who are worried about being able to afford health care.

“If your premium is more than doubling and your income hasn’t increased, that’s something they’re trying to evaluate in their household. And then others are trying to say, well, the cost of this monthly premium is more than what I pay for rent and my bills included,” Williams says.

An increasing number of factors are making it harder and more expensive for low-income Georgians to access and afford health care.

Cuts made by the Trump administration, individuals losing insurance, and a national trend of hospital closures are placing mounting pressure on the remaining health care infrastructure.

In WABE’s series, “Medical Wealth Gap: Filling the cracks in Atlanta’s safety net,” we look at the impending changes to health care and what they will mean for people in Georgia…

More uninsured Georgians and overwhelmed ERs

Deanna Williams, Georgians for a Healthy Future Enrollment Assister, is part of the state’s Certified Application Counselor (CAC) program. She said some of the people she works with are facing increases well beyond their budgets, forcing them to look elsewhere for health care.

In many cases, that means waiting until conditions are severe enough to warrant a visit to the emergency room or turning to free and low-cost clinics that cannot offer more advanced, specialized care.

“They’re going to go to the emergency rooms for care because typically, the emergency room can’t turn you away. And it’s going to also overwork the sliding scale clinics or even volunteer clinics,” Williams said. “They’re going to get an increase in the influx of people coming to receive services there because they no longer have health insurance.

The situation is even worse in rural parts of the state, where closures have been on the rise, and hospitals that remain open are having to cut back on services and departments to stay open.

Williams recommends that insurance marketplace customers carefully evaluate available plans to find the option that best suits their needs.

“Compare plans beyond their monthly premium to make sure that the plan shows them their total cost picture, co-pays, deductibles, and co-insurance, said Williams. “A lot of people will just pick the plan based on the monthly premium and then later on find out that the plan doesn’t necessarily cover everything that they need for their health, their specialists are not covering all of their providers.”

Republicans across the country are in a bind of President Donald Trump’s making: After voting to end the 43-day federal shutdown, they have yet to articulate a plan to tackle the upcoming spike in health care premiums.

That conundrum is coming into sharp relief in Georgia, a state with an especially high reliance on the Affordable Care Act, where Republicans have one of their best opportunities to pick up a Senate seat as they fight to maintain their grip on Congress…

Over 1.5 million Georgians rely on the state-based exchange known as Georgia Access for insurance, making the Peach State host to the fourth-highest marketplace enrollment in the country, according to one analysis. Over 90 percent of those enrollees use the federal subsidies to afford their insurance.

“You can really see the impact of the enhanced premium tax credits on the marketplace and having that increased affordability really pushed our marketplace enrollment quite high,” said Laura Colbert, executive director of the advocacy group Georgians for a Healthy Future.

But when the subsidies expire at the end of the year, 340,000 of those enrolled are projected to lose their insurance as premium prices skyrocket, per the Georgia Health Initiative projection.

That will likely foment before the end of the year, Colbert posited, describing Dec. 15 as a “drop dead” date by which insurance companies will start delivering premium notices to auto-enrolled customers about their 2026 coverage.

“Rural Georgians are going to feel this in a bigger way than those of us who live in the metro Atlanta area,” she added, saying “folks that live in rural areas tend to be older and so therefore premiums are already a lot higher in those regions.”