Oct 30, 2025 ATLANTA (AP) — There may be no rank-and-file Democratic senator with more at stake from the federal government shutdown than Georgia’s Jon Ossoff. He is the party’s only senator who is seeking reelection next year in a state that Republican Donald Trump won in 2024, and any chance that Democrats may have in regaining Senate control depends on Ossoff holding the seat. As the second-longest shutdown in history drags on and Democrats insist on extending expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies beyond year’s end, more people in Georgia than most other states are likely to lose health insurance if the tax credits go away. About 1.5 million Georgians are insured this year through Democratic President Barack Obama’s health overhaul that was enacted in 2010. Because Georgia is one of 10 states that has not fully expanded Medicaid, as was envisioned under “Obamacare,” it has a larger population covered by the law’s marketplace policies than in Medicaid-expansion states. “Particularly because we have such a high number of low-income folks in our marketplace, and they’re very price sensitive, we have a much higher risk of seeing those people drop out of the insurance pool,” said Laura Colbert, executive director of Georgians for a Healthy Future. The group, which promotes expanded health coverage, projects that 340,000 Georgians could drop coverage because of higher prices.

Oct 23, 2025

Dr. Joy Baker, an obstetrician and gynecologist within the Wellstar Health System, has seen patients who have driven from two and a half hours away for care. Some within the health care industry are calling this a crisis and fear things are about to get worse.

Once the One Big Beautiful Bill was signed into law on July 4, 2025, by President Donald Trump, it triggered coverage cuts to Medicaid. For rural hospitals that treat large numbers of Medicaid recipients, that means less revenue. According to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, Georgia currently has 71 rural hospitals, and the loss of funds is putting as many as 20 rural hospitals at risk of closing and 28 could experience a loss of services.

In September, St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital in rural northeast Georgia was forced to close its labor and delivery unit, and it’s an hour drive to the next maternity care facility in Athens. In southeast Georgia, Evans Memorial Hospital has already closed its OB/GYN unit, and the intensive care unit might be next. With nine rural hospitals closing since 2010, local health advocates say Georgia ranks third in the nation for hospital closures.

On Thursday’s edition of “Closer Look,” Baker joins program host Rose Scott along with Whitney Griggs, the director of health policy at Georgians for a Healthy Future, to discuss the impact this will have on rural communities.

Oct 22, 2025

Millions of Americans are already seeing their health insurance costs soar for 2026 as Congress remains deadlocked over extending covid-era subsidies for premiums.

The bitter fight sparked a government shutdown at the start of October. Democrats refuse to vote on government-funding legislation unless it extends the subsidies, while Republicans insist on separate negotiations after reopening the government. Now lawmakers face greater pressure to act as Americans who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act are seeing, or are about to see, the consequences of enhanced subsidies expiring at the end of the year…

If Congress doesn’t extend the extra subsidies, Georgia could lose around 340,000 people from its 1.5 million-person marketplace, according to an estimate by nonpartisan advocacy group Georgians for a Healthy Future.

The enhanced subsidies had fully covered monthly premiums for millions of lower-income people in the marketplaces. Many of them will have to start kicking in some of their own money starting Jan. 1, while people with higher incomes will see their monthly subsidies shrink.

Oct 3, 2025

ATLANTA — The federal government is closed for a third day. With national park visitor centers locked and hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed, Republicans and Democrats say voters should hold the other side responsible for the fallout.

But in Georgia, some are focused less on who’s to blame than how long the shutdown will last.

The last shutdown dragged on for 35 days from Dec. 2018 to Jan. 2019. Among the hardest hit were Transportation Security Administration employees at Atlanta’s humongous airport who had to keep working without pay.

Laura Colbert, executive director of the advocacy group Georgians for a Healthy Future, said enrollment on the insurance policy marketplace created through the ACA has tripled in Georgia since the subsidies were passed in 2020.

Sep 22, 2025

Many state Medicaid systems today are a patchwork of vendors and capabilities not designed to pull and track data from disparate sources — a capability at the core of tracking compliance with work requirements and ensuring people aren’t improperly disenrolled, she said.

For example, Georgia — currently the only state to have a live work requirements program — has seen enrollment fall well short of expectations, in part due to issues with the state’s portal that processes Medicaid applications.

“It hasn’t been as successful as we would like it to be,” said Deanna Williams, an enrollment assister with health advocacy group Georgians for a Healthy Future.

Before the portal was updated this spring, it frequently crashed when people tried to submit applications, didn’t work on smartphones and required documents to be uploaded in certain formats, according to Williams.

“It wasn’t that the client does not work, or doesn’t have proof of their income — they were just having issues uploading the documents to verify their income. Which, if not provided within a timely manner, could lead to your application being denied,” she said.

It’s still early days, but states are trying to build IT systems that can prevent that, speakers said. Utah, for example, is connecting its Medicaid department with the state’s higher education database, so it can more easily track education hours for beneficiaries, Strohecker said.

Georgia’s Williams recommended that states also start to think about partnerships with trusted community groups for member outreach and education, including health centers, churches, schools and libraries.

Communications about Medicaid changes should be repeated frequently and across multiple platforms, like in-person, email, text messages and phone calls, she said.

States are juggling the allocation of already tight resources. Strohecker said that Utah is planning to hire some additional staff to help with eligibility oversight, but is mostly making do with what it already has.

“There are lots of things we might want to do, but there are many things we have to do. And if we’re going to do them well we have to align our existing staff and resources behind those,” she said, adding later: “Time is of the essence.”

Sep 17, 2025

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the former TV doctor who now leads the nation’s Medicare and Medicaid programs, spoke at an Atlanta health care conference on Wednesday, touting work requirements and his own agency’s efforts to recruit tech workers.

Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, spoke at Health Connect South, an annual conference for people from across health care professions. He was interviewed by former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, a former Georgia congressman, during a keynote session….

Oz said Trump’s charge to him was to reduce “fraud, waste, abuse.” Medicaid work requirements like those implemented in Georgia are designed to ensure recipients have “skin in the game.”

Oz said many Medicaid recipients spend hours watching television daily, but they “don’t want to just stay at home; they do want to go work.”

Georgia’s work requirements program has foundered, and local advocates have criticized the program.

Before it launched, the state Department of Community Health requested funds to cover 100,000 people in its first year, which concluded in July. It had enrolled just over 8,000 by the end of June.

“In Georgia, most low-income adults are already working, caring for family, or living with serious health conditions,” Whitney Griggs, director of health policy at Georgians for a Healthy Future, told Healthbeat. “Instead of helping families, the program’s red tape has kept hundreds of thousands of Georgians locked out of affordable coverage. Georgia’s experience should be considered proof that these policies do not work.”

Sep 12, 2025

On Thursday, September 11, the healthcare consumer advocacy group, Families USA, facilitated a press conference with Florida Voices for Health, Georgians for a Healthy Future, and West Virginians for Affordable Healthcare, discussing the recent federal budget cuts to healthcare and their impact on working families in Florida, Georgia, and West Virginia.

Whitney Griggs, Director of Health Policy for Georgians for a Healthy Future, mentioned that the stakes are especially high for Georgia. “In 2025, Georgia operated its own state-based marketplace called Georgia Access,” Griggs explained. “For the first time, more than 1.5 million Georgians signed up for coverage through Georgia Access, making it the second-largest state-based marketplace in the country. And over 90 percent of Georgia Access enrollees rely on premium tax credits to make their insurance more affordable.”

“Affordable coverage means that people can see a doctor, manage chronic conditions, and get preventive care without risking financial ruin. If costs soar and coverage slips away, the consequences will ripple through every part of our state at almost every income level,” Griggs cautioned.

 

Sep 12, 2025

ATLANTA — Health-care advocates warned Thursday that Georgia residents who have to find their own insurance in the government marketplace should expect significant rate increases next year.

Insurance companies are filing rate increase requests with regulators, arguing that federal budget cuts and the end of COVID-19 tax credits are the main drivers, said Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA.

“These are individual workers and working families who simply don’t get coverage on the job or through public programs like Medicaid or Medicare,” Wright said.

Wright said affected workers include retail and restaurant employees, ride-hail and food-delivery drivers, beauticians, barbers, plumbers and other self-employed workers.

Georgia’s government marketplace is called Georgia Access. The state also offers Pathways to Coverage for those nearer the poverty level.

The group KFF calculates that a half million Georgians could lose coverage. Another group, Georgians for a Healthy Future (GHF), puts that number at 340,000, estimating an average rate increase of 75%.

“If costs soar and coverage slips away, the consequences will ripple through every part of our state at almost every income level,” said Whitney Griggs, health policy director for GHF.

Georgia’s Office of Insurance was not immediately available to clarify the numbers, but it will not be long before insurance shoppers see the result, with enrollment for 2026 likely to start around November.

Aug 14, 2025

Georgia residents could see as much as a 40% increase in their health insurance premiums if Congress does not act to extend the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credits, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff said at a press conference Thursday.

Ossoff, a Democrat, said he is urging congressional Republicans to “reverse course” on allowing the credits — which help subsidize ACA health care premiums for low-income and middle class families — to expire. Currently, families with incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty line are eligible for the credits, which comes out to $62,600 for a single-person household and $128,600 for a household of four.

The credits were first introduced in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, and are associated with record high ACA enrollment levels. In Georgia, 96% of enrollees use advanced premium tax credits to cover some or all of their health care costs. Georgia’s state insurance marketplace, known as Georgia Access, is the second-largest in the country after California.

“The enhanced premium tax credits have allowed Georgia Access to be so successful, and they have allowed hundreds of thousands of Georgians to get coverage for the first time,” said Whitney Griggs, the director of health policy at Georgians for a Healthy Future, a patient advocacy group.

 

Aug 11, 2025

The passage of the reconciliation package known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” means that many Georgians—particularly those who rely on social safety nets like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid—could face hardship in the coming years.

To prepare for these challenges, an understanding of the contents of the bill is essential.

“This law essentially makes deep cuts to programs that are the foundation of health, food security, and economic stability for hundreds of thousands of Georgians,” says Anthony Hill, Strategic Communications Manager at Georgians for a Healthy Future. “It’s easy to talk about these programs in terms of numbers and budgets, but behind every number is a family. So, at the core of this conversation are those families and what we can do to protect their health and their dignity at a time when the programs that they depend on are at risk.”…

Sweeping Changes to Georgia’s Affordable Care Act Marketplace—Whitney Griggs, Director of Health Policy, Georgians for a Healthy Future

Griggs sets the scene by explaining the current state of Georgia Access, our state’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace: “Georgia has the second largest state-based marketplace in the country. This year over 1.5 million Georgians enrolled in health insurance through Georgia Access. Over 90% of those enrollees receive financial assistance to help lower the cost of their monthly premiums and since 2022, there have been additional enhanced tax credits in place to help lower those monthly premiums even further. And many Georgians have fully subsidized coverage, so they’re paying nothing for their health insurance at the moment.”

Here are the changes Griggs predicts:

• The enhanced premium tax credits that allow people with low incomes to qualify for fully subsidized health coverage will expire at the end of the year. That will mean premium increases for many.
• More people will fall into the gap between Medicaid (they’ll earn too much to qualify) and the ACA marketplace (they’ll earn too little to afford premiums) and become uninsured.
• Reduced funds for Georgia’s reinsurance program, “which is essentially insurance for insurers,” Griggs says, could endanger the stability of the marketplace overall.
• The end of auto-renewals for those who qualify for tax credits could create administrative burdens and prevent more Georgia families from getting health coverage.