A Healthier Georgia

Nearly 1 in 5 Georgians under the age of 65 are uninsured. My greatest priority is to close the coverage gap and expand medicaid into the state of Georgia.

The majority of people who would be covered by expanding Medicaid are working but often not offered health benefits through their job.
Closing Georgia’s coverage gap would extend health insurance to more than 155,000 uninsured women in Georgia. Georgia ranks among the bottom five states for women’s health insurance coverage.
Closing the coverage gap could extend health insurance to nearly half of Georgia’s uninsured veterans, expanding coverage to 32,000 uninsured veterans and military spouses in our state.

The excuse that we will have to increase taxes to fund medicaid no longer exists, because the state of Georgia had a budget surplus of $16 billion for the 2023 fiscal year. This is more than enough to pay for Medicaid expansion.

As Georgia leaders refuse to close the coverage gap, the federal government simply keeps our tax dollars. Each year we wait, our state misses out on $3 billion federal dollars meant to pay for Georgians’ health coverage. That’s more than $8 million each day. For every dollar the state spends on closing the coverage gap, Georgia receives up to $9 in federal funding.*

https://gbpi.org/fast-facts-georgias-coverage-gap/

I will also work to protect women's healthcare freedoms because I believe that a woman's healthcare decisions should be made between her and her doctor. In the neighboring state of Alabama, where abortion is banned at any stage of pregnancy, we have seen the extreme measures that anti-abortion legislation can reach. This ban has led to frozen embryos being classified as people, meaning any mishandling of them is considered an abortion. As a result, labs have ceased offering IVF services to women who otherwise would not be able to conceive. Around 2% of births in the United States result from IVF. Losing access to IVF would shatter the dreams of women who might otherwise be unable to have children. Although Georgia's laws are not as restrictive yet, they could become equally severe if the state continues to attack women's reproductive rights.