{"id":252616,"date":"2026-05-07T15:59:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T19:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/?p=252616"},"modified":"2026-05-07T15:59:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T19:59:34","slug":"why-does-georgias-gop-want-to-irresponsibly-keep-healthcare-from-its-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/?p=252616","title":{"rendered":"Why does Georgia\u2019s GOP want to irresponsibly keep healthcare from its citizens?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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“Today\u2019s announcement builds on the progress we have already made to provide healthcare coverage to more Georgians through Georgia Pathways,”\u00a0<\/strong>–Lt. Governor Burt\u00a0Jones<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Yes, but if Georgia simply expanded Medicaid… versus coming up with its own highly ineffective Pathways program…\u00a0And\u00a0the Federal government would have paid 90% of the cost.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Jones\u2019 remarks are not surprising given the GOP\u2019s stance on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). On Feb. 26, 2018, supported by the first Trump administration, 20 Republican controlled\u00a0states…including Georgia…\u00a0filed a suit to do away with the Affordable Care Act<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s action was consistent with the President\u2019s frequent declarations that he would repeal the ACA and replace it with something better. However, in his first or second term, he never came up with any reform proposal to accomplish this aim<\/em>. Many legal scholars heavily criticized the filing as political rather than legal in nature, not uncommon for this president and his supporters.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Georgia, the red states filing (i.e., \u201cstate plaintiffs\u201d) include: Texas<\/strong>, Wisconsin<\/strong>, Arkansas<\/strong>, Arizona<\/strong>, Florida<\/strong>, Georgia<\/strong>, Indiana<\/strong>, Kansas<\/strong>, Louisiana<\/strong>, Maine<\/strong>, Mississippi<\/strong>, Missouri<\/strong>, Nebraska<\/strong>, North Dakota<\/strong>, South Carolina<\/strong>, South Dakota<\/strong>, Tennessee<\/strong>, Utah<\/strong>, and West Virginia<\/strong>. Wisconsin and Maine withdrew in 2019 after Democrats took many state offices, leaving 18 states as plaintiffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were 27 states who either defended the ACA<\/a>, joined in defending on appeal or filed briefs supporting the ACA.\u00a0To\u00a0my surprise,\u00a0California v. Texas\u00a0<\/em>was decided in a 7-2 decision. Essentially, this very conservative Supreme Court found that these 18 red states had no standing to sue.\u00a0But why did they sue in the first place when many of these states have much higher\u00a0numbers of uninsured versus blue states?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several of these 18 states are affluent. But most are among the poorest in the USA, including our neighbors Alabama and Mississippi.\u00a0Generally, the 18 states suing to find the ACA unconstitutional have healthcare insurance rates lower than the national average. Three have the largest number of uninsured in the nation, including Texas, Florida\u00a0and our own state of Georgia.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, Georgia has a 12% uninsurance rate<\/a> compared to only 3% in deep blue Massachusetts.\u00a0That means that, even after the ACA, there are still over a million Georgians uninsured…despite Jones and Kemp claiming that Pathways is working.\u00a0When\u00a0Kemp states that \u201cGeorgia Pathways has expanded healthcare coverage to thousands of low-income and able-bodied Georgians since it launched”\u00a0he is correct. What\u00a0he leaves out is that about 400,000 more could have had insurance if Georgia simply expanded Medicaid without Pathways,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the ACA was passed, many uninsured individuals obtained insurance<\/a>. By 2016,\u00a0\u00a020 million had been added nationally.\u00a0However, under Trump\u2019s first term the rate of insured fell and the number of uninsured went up from 26.7 million to 28.9 million.\u00a0Due to Medicaid and ACA cuts made in Trump\u2019s second administration, the number of uninsured is projected by CBO to rise by 14\u00a0million, including nearly half a million in Georgia<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who are the medically uninsured? More are adults than children. The uninsured are disproportionately low income. However, the majority have one or more employed people in the family unit but just don\u2019t receive healthcare benefits in their jobs. They simply cannot afford to buy coverage.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, more of the uninsured are people of color versus Caucasian<\/a>. The national racial breakdown for uninsured adults is: American Indian-19%; Hispanic- 18%; Pacific Islander-\u00a012%; Black- 10%, White- 8% and Asian- 7%.\u00a0\u00a0People\u00a0of color vote disproportionally for Democrats. Whites tend to vote for the GOP. Is this a key reason why states like Georgia which are controlled by the GOP on the state level wanted the ACA repealed and\/or found unconstitutional? There certainly is a correlation,\u00a0if not a totally provable causation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America is the world\u2019s only superpower… and the only developed nation not offering health insurance for all. We should all look forward to the day when partisan politics is not as important as assuring that needy Americans have the healthcare that they deserve. In the immortal words of Martin Luther King, Jr., \u201cOf all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Today\u2019s announcement builds on the progress we have already made to provide healthcare coverage to more Georgians through Georgia Pathways,”\u00a0–Lt. Governor Burt\u00a0Jones. Yes, but if Georgia simply expanded Medicaid… versus coming up with its own highly ineffective Pathways program…\u00a0And\u00a0the Federal government would have paid 90% of the cost. But Jones\u2019 remarks are not surprising given […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":948,"featured_media":28033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"hidden","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[258],"tags":[16358,16965,9231,9750,8552,13050],"class_list":["post-252616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-aca","tag-georgia-pathways","tag-gop","tag-healthcare","tag-medicaid","tag-medicaid-expansion","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/948"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=252616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=252616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=252616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=252616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}