Georgia's Medicaid work requirements are raking millions from taxpayer coffers, with a scant chunk of the cash flowing directly to medical care for low-income citizens. Governor Brian Kemp's program, Georgia Pathways to Coverage, is pumping cash primarily into the pockets of consultants and bureaucrats, while thousands of Georgians are left still uninsured.
Despite projections to truly help fill the healthcare void, only about 3,500 have signed up since the program's summer commencement—a mere fraction of the 25,000 expected in the first year. Kemp's plan demands that low-income individuals, to qualify for government health insurance, must prove they are employed, in school, or meeting other specified criteria. These hurdles, at a cost of $26 million to date, have largely benefited administrative processes and third-party consultants like Deloitte, which received $2.4 million to prepare the federal application, as stated by KFF Health News.
Under fire for these upscale administrative costs, Joan Alker, executive director and co-founder of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, told KFF Health News, "The Pathways program is 'fiscally foolish and anti-family.' A lot of taxpayer money has been wasted, and not on health care for people who need it." Deloitte received hefty sums to spearhead the project, with an additional $51 million over two years earmarked for further systems development.
Meanwhile, the GOP-led Georgia legislature continues to sidestep the possibility of broadening Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, a move that could potentially cover an additional 359,000 uninsured residents and reportedly carve $710 million from state spending over two years. Georgia is an outlier among states for enforcing work requisites on its Medicaid expansion population, placing it at odds with states like North Carolina, which enrolled 380,000 beneficiaries in its Medicaid expansion as of March 1, as per its Department of Health and Human Services.
Chris Denson, director of policy and research at the conservative Georgia Public Policy Foundation, appeared to defend the program's sluggish start, stating in an interview with KFF Health News that low enrollment numbers are "just part of the ramping up." Yet, as Leah Chan, director of health justice at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute highlights, "The eligibility system, the thing that we’ve spent the most money on, is actually one of the things standing in the way of the program seeing higher enrollment."
Even the courts are now a battleground for the contentious policy, with Georgia recently suing the federal government to extend the work requirement program's operation through to 2028. As of February 7, the legal battle had already chalked up more than $230,000 in attorney fees, adding to the overall financial strain of the program, which aligns with other states' spending patterns, like Kentucky's projected $272 million in administrative spending, all without the anticipated enrollee numbers to show for it.
