What Brian Kemp said:

“When you have populations declining in rural Georgia, it’s hard to support a hospital, it’s hard to support kids that are coming out of school systems with good employment. We have to have people investing in rural Georgia, and we need a governor who can focus on that job creation.” [AJC, 9/18/18]

Why he’s wrong:

1. Medicaid expansion will support rural hospitals and keep them open.
2. Even regions of Georgia with declining populations need health insurance and hospitals.
3. Hospitals don’t shutter from a lack of patients. They shutter from a lack of resources.
4. Medicaid expansion compensates health care providers like rural hospitals for work they are already doing.
5. Georgians need access to health care whether they live in areas that are struggling or in areas that are thriving.
6. Medicaid expansion is a job creator. It would create 56,000 jobs in Georgia, most of them outside the Atlanta Metro.
7. We have to have a governor investing in rural Georgia. That means expanding Medicaid.
8. Losing out on $8 million a day to other states by not expanding Medicaid is not an effective way to foster job creation.
9. Without hospitals, there won’t be a healthy workforce, and without a healthy workforce, there won’t be jobs.
10. The private sector won’t magically create jobs in areas with no hospital simply because Brian Kemp says so.

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