Leading congressional health insurance reform proposals, including expansion of Medicaid , which not only brought the coverage to nearly one million low-income, uninsured Georgia, but would provide at least 90 percent of the funds to do so.

Although clear and significant benefits for the economy of the state and its citizens, Governor Sonny Perdue, Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle and others arguing against reforms that Georgia can not afford to pay his share of the proposed expansion of Medicaid either the House or Senate proposal.

They claim that the costs would expand Medicaid georgia more than $ 2 billion more than six or seven years, but they rarely mention the billions of new federal funds that will flow to Georgia’s economy during this period.

But their calculation is misleading. On the basis of annual cost to expand Medicaid for hundreds of thousands of uninsured residents with little access to coverage is not only affordable, but very cheap to Georgia.

Georgian government itself estimates the House proposal forecasts $ 93 million in additional state costs the first year (2013). This is equivalent to an increase of less than 5 percent of the Georgia Medicaid no budget and less than 1 percent of the overall state budget.

In addition, the cost of this country will be accompanied by hundreds of millions of new federal funding flowing to Georgia every year, contributing to the country’s health care sector and the local economy.

Over time, these costs will rise as the economy and population grow. As more people sign up, and as medical costs increase with inflation, the government of Georgia estimates that the cost could reach $ 500 million a year by 2019. However, this number must be placed in perspective as well. Relative to the overall state budget ten years from now, these costs will remain a small percentage and would be managed.

Although Georgia income across the spectrum have seen their access to employer-sponsored coverage decreased in recent years, low-income families has been greatly affected.

A quarter of Georgia only in families with incomes below twice the poverty level ($ 36,600 for a family of three) have employer coverage, compared with 76.6 percent for families with income above this limit.

As a result, low-income individuals and families in Georgia far more likely to be insured (35.9 percent) than their counterparts higher income (10.9 percent). In total, nearly 1.7 million non-elderly Georgia (nearly one out of five) do not have health insurance in 2007-2008.

They are opposed to expanding health insurance coverage should also consider the possible impact of uninsured Georgia children and adults if they remain insured. Insured people have less access to medical care on time, worse health outcomes, and more likely to die prematurely than insured counterparts.

There is plenty of time for the leaders of Georgia to ensure the state has sufficient funds to pay what the federal government does not so we reduce the high number of our citizens insured. The second proposal gives the state a few years to meet the new Medicaid eligibility standards, and they provide full federal funding for two to three years of implementation.

Our elected leaders must deal with Georgia ‘growing needs, rather than attitudes toward national reform. Georgia’s uninsured rate in the nation’s tenth, about one in seven people living in poverty in 2008, and we lose jobs in the nation’s fifth level. Vulnerable groups hit hardest during the recession, and low-income workers to lose employer-sponsored health insurance faster than others.

Instead of a multi-year use misleading figures to argue that the state can not afford to expand Medicaid coverage to people fighting, Georgian leaders must realize that we should not lose this great opportunity to ensure that citizens most in need and bringing hundreds of millions of dollars
into the state economy each year.

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Tags: Finance, Finance Blog, Georgia, Insurance