ICYMI: AJC: Medicaid cuts would gut this Georgia pediatrician’s practice

All nine Georgia Republicans in Congress voted to gut Medicaid

Earlier this week, all nine Georgia Republicans in Congress voted for a budget that would slash billions of dollars from Medicaid – which 2 million Georgians rely on for health care – in order to finance more tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. A new column from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Patricia Murphy highlights Georgia pediatricians’ worries that the cuts will devastate their young patients and leave them without access to care.

In Georgia, sixty-five percent of Medicaid recipients are children, half of all childbirths are covered by Medicaid, and three-quarters of seniors in nursing homes rely on Medicaid.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Patricia Murphy: Medicaid cuts would gut this Georgia pediatrician’s practice

February 28, 2025

Key points:

• House Republicans passed a budget this week that would cut up to $2 trillion from the federal budget.
  
• Those cuts could soon affect Georgians across the state, especially those getting their health insurance through Medicaid.
  
• Before you write off Medicaid recipients as “not like me,” remember that Medicaid covers roughly 2 million people, including half of all births, 70% of nursing home patients and 2 in 5 children in Georgia, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. If you don’t think you know anyone on Medicaid, you’re probably wrong. […]
  
• [Dr. Dorsey] Norwood now runs her own pediatric practice on Cleveland Avenue near East Point, complete with a bright and cheery waiting room to welcome patients and their parents. But you don’t need to look further than the shuttered South Fulton Medical Center next door to understand that this is the part of the city that most doctors and hospitals abandoned long ago, leaving vast swathes of Georgians without accessible, reliable health care in the process.
  
• […] Even in this working-class section of Atlanta, she estimates that 85% of her pediatric patients are covered by Medicaid, while the rest are mostly covered by their parents’ private insurance plans. That means even a modest cut to Medicaid benefits would be impossible for her practice to absorb.

• “As it is, we are just making ends meet,” she said. “A 15% cut? I don’t think I’d be able to keep the business.”
  
• On the morning I visited, Norwood had already seen a newborn baby whose mother had been her patient, as well as a little girl with a chronic kidney condition. A little boy tested positive for COVID, while a prescription for ADHD medication was waiting to be renewed. Next, it was time for Kinsley Wilson’s 9-month checkup.
  
• Kinsley’s mom, Shakira Wilson, has two teenagers who are also patients at the practice. She works full time at Walmart. Although she gets health insurance through her job, covering her children through her private plan would be so expensive she could not also afford rent and groceries. Because her income also qualifies her for Medicaid in Georgia, she is able to make sure her children are insured through the government program.
  
• Like all recipients, she is required to confirm her eligibility through the state of Georgia once a year. But if her Medicaid benefits are cut in the future, she said, “I don’t know how my children would see the doctor.”
  
• […] Like Wilson, Norwood said nearly all of her patients’ parents work in full-time jobs, many at companies that provide limited or no health insurance. “Who doesn’t work? They all do,” she said. “These are hardworking people.”
  
• Republicans have been quick to point out that the budget they just voted for never mentions the word “Medicaid” in the text. But the fine print makes it clear that the committee tasked with finding more than $880 billion in spending cuts is the same one that oversees Medicare and Medicaid. Avoiding Medicaid cuts, while also cutting nearly $1 billion from health care programs, will be nearly impossible.
  
• Before members of Congress decide what exactly to cut, including Medicaid, they should acknowledge the effects of the cuts they’re making on the constituents they represent. For at least one Georgia pediatrician, cutting Medicaid benefits for her young patients would leave a wound in her practice that even she couldn’t heal.

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