Kemp’s Medicaid Experiment Failures in Full View Across Georgia 

AP: “Health and public policy experts believe the enrollment numbers, dismal even compared to what Kemp’s office had said Pathways could achieve, reflect a fundamental flaw”

Last week Governor Brian Kemp’s “signature” Medicaid Experiment Failures were in full view across the state. From the AP to the AJC, the New York Times, and a “big loss” in federal court, Governor Brian Kemp’s gamble with Georgians’ health care has been widely panned as “not promising,” “dismal,” and covering a “a tiny fraction” of the Georgians that would be covered under full Medicaid Expansion pushed by Democrats. 

“It’s clear that the Georgia Pathways experiment is a huge failure,” Leo Cuello, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy, told the AP.

And to top it off, a federal judge ruled that Governor Brian Kemp’s Pathways to Coverage will expire in 2025 as planned because the Governor and his team “didn’t comply with federal rules for an extension.”

Here’s just some of the coverage below:

WSB: 
“Governor Kemp suffers a setback with one of his signature programs. A federal judge says it was legal for the bid administration to reject the Governor’s request to extend his Georgia pathways, saying the state didn’t go through the proper process”

Associated Press: 
By now, Georgia officials expected their new Medicaid plan, the only one in the nation with a work requirement, to provide health insurance to 25,000 low-income residents and possibly tens of thousands more.

But a year since its launch, Pathways to Coverage has roughly 4,300 members, much lower than what state officials projected and a tiny fraction of the roughly half-million state residents who could be covered if Georgia, like 40 other states, agreed to a full Medicaid expansion.
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Health and public policy experts believe the enrollment numbers, dismal even compared to what Kemp’s office had said Pathways could achieve, reflect a fundamental flaw: The work requirement is just too burdensome.
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But Kemp, like many other Republican governors, rejected full expansion, arguing that the state’s long-term costs would end up being too high.
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For now, Georgia officials show no sign of giving up on Pathways. 

The New York Times:
Officials estimated the program could enroll up to 100,000 residents within a year. As of the program’s one-year mark in early July, fewer than 4,500 Georgians had enrolled, according to state data.

To its critics, the Georgia experiment provides a cautionary tale in that campaign to reshape the management of Medicaid, which covers around 75 million people nationwide.

The costs of insuring recipients in Pathways dwarfs the costs of covering someone under regular Medicaid expansion, health policy experts have said. Operating the program has already cost the state and federal government more than $32 million, mostly for administrative expenses, according to state data.

“What’s clear is that the Pathways to Coverage program is more costly and covers fewer people than if we were to implement a program that fully covers the coverage gap,” said Leah Chan, a health policy expert who has tracked Pathways enrollment data at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, a nonprofit research firm.

Georgia already has one of the strictest income limits for Medicaid in the nation, and has carried one of the highest uninsured rates in the nation in recent years.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 
Pathways has seen dismal enrollment rates, drawing just 4,500 uninsured applicants out of an estimated 370,000 eligible Georgians. More than 90% of the $26 million cost has gone toward administrative and consulting fees.

Despite serious medical problems, [stage four cancer patient LaShonda] Harrell was dropped from her Medicaid plan in November. She is one of an estimated 290,000 uninsured Georgians who fall into a health care gap — earning too much to get Medicaid but not enough to buy a private insurance plan.

“The anguish and stress on me has been a lot,” she said.

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, gave states the ability to expand Medicaid to all low-income adults, with the federal government paying 90% of the cost. Forty other states have expanded the joint state-federal program to cover more uninsured citizens, but Georgia has not.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 
The program, called Pathways to Coverage, has struggled. On Tuesday, preliminary figures obtained by the AJC show that with its first full year just completed, Pathways has enrolled 4,494 people as of July 5. That’s a tiny fraction of the 90,000 that Kemp aides projected would enroll in the 12 months after it started July 1 last year.

The governor told the AJC that he remains committed to the Pathways program despite its dismal participation. 

In her ruling Monday, U.S. Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the Southern District of Georgia said the state didn’t comply with federal rules for an extension, so the Biden administration properly rejected its request to extend the Pathways program’s expiration date from September 2025 to 2028.

WSB – Atlanta, GA:
“One of Governor Kemp’s signature and more controversial programs suffers a big loss from a federal judge. The judge said Kemp didn’t follow the steps for getting approval to extend his Georgia Pathways program for 3 more years, so the Biden Administration was right to deny it.” 

90.1 FM WABE – Atlanta, GA:
“Governor Brian Kemp’s office says Pathways needs time to grow. Initially, the state had projected as many as 100,000 sign ups in the first year. So far, only around 4,300 people are participating.”

WSB-ATL (ABC) – Atlanta, GA Ch 2 Action News @ 4pm:
“A federal judge says Georgia cannot extend the time frame for the state’s Medicaid program. It’s set to expire next year. Nearly 5,000 people are enrolled right now and that’s a much lower number than the 90,000 people Governor Brian Kemp’s team projected would enroll within the first year. A spokesperson for the governor now says he’s looking for ways to keep the program up and running.”

WMGT (NBC) – Macon, GA 41 NBC News at 5pm:
“A judge ruled the Biden administration complied with the law when it declined to grant an extension to Georgia’s year-old medicaid plan. It’s the only one in the country that has a work requirement for recipients of the publicly-funded health coverage for low-income people. The judge said the state did not comply with federal rules for an extension, so the Biden administration legally rejected its request to extend the Georgia Pathways to Coverage program’s expiration day.”

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