Kemp’s plan would not cover, for example, a person who cares full-time for a relative with Alzheimer’s disease or a person who volunteers and is not registered with an organization. registered nonprofit. Those who are mentally ill but cannot or will not go through the lengthy process to be federally certified as disabled would also not meet the coverage requirements.
In mid-December, U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “I think we’ve made our concern clear, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic, one we haven’t seen in generations, how concerned we are about the demands of the job. A week later, on December 23, the Biden administration rejected Georgia’s work or activity requirement.
CMS said Friday the office does not comment on ongoing litigation.
The courts ruled that the work requirements did not meet the purpose of the Medicaid law, which was to provide health coverage. The Kemp administration has argued that the commitment requirement is not a work requirement.
The rejection actually left Georgia in an unexpected place. For the first time since Governor Nathan Deal’s administration, Georgia now apparently has an open avenue under state and federal law to extend Medicaid to everyone below the federal poverty level.
When the Obama administration signed into law the Affordable Care Act, Republican states rose up in protest and refused to extend Medicaid to all the poor as the ACA had planned. Instead, while Democratic-run states expanded it, Republic-run states lagged behind. Over time, Republican states began to extend Medicaid to all of their poor.
Georgia is now one of 12 states not to have done so. One reason is that the Georgia legislature passed a law prohibiting the governor from doing so.
However, the 2019 legislature opened a window in the law, for the purposes of Kemp’s health care exemption. This 2019 law states that after Washington approves the waiver, the governor’s administration can implement it without further action by the state legislature. There were only a few caveats, including that Medicaid could only be offered to people earning 100% of the poverty line income. That would be over 200,000 Georgians currently uninsured.
On Friday, officials from Georgians for a Healthy Future, an organization that advocates for Medicaid expansion, said that’s what Kemp should do now.
“At this point, the Governor and Attorney General are wasting taxpayers’ money and time that could be spent enrolling and covering people who are currently uninsured,” said Laura Colbert, Director of GHF. .
Libertarian groups such as the Georgia Public Policy Foundation argued that the work requirement was the responsible way to spend taxpayer dollars if Medicaid were to be expanded.
“We still believe the program outlined in the waiver is a better solution than just a direct expansion of Medicaid,” said Kyle Wingfield, president of GPPF. Blaming Kemp for the delay, he said, is “blaming the wrong party.”
Attorney General Chris Carr filed the suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia Brunswick Division. Now it’s up to the Biden administration to respond.
Read the Georgia trial HERE.
