- Price of Independence: Georgia’s experimental alternative to Medicaid expansion has cost taxpayers more than $86 million.
- Enrollment Shortfall: Only 6,500 participants have enrolled in the first 18 months of the program — roughly 75% fewer than the state had estimated for year one.
- Work Slowdown: The state found it difficult to verify that people are working to keep their benefits, so Georgia has gone from monthly checks to annual ones.
putting work requirements on healthcare is what damned it.
Right now, Georgia is the only state that imposes a work requirement for Medicaid coverage. But more than a dozen largely Republican-led states already plan to seek approval from the Trump administration to impose work requirements on Medicaid enrollees.
Even moving it to an annual work verification isn’t going to help. People are struggling to find and maintain work, so why apply for something that’s going to be stripped from them in the future, through no fault of their own?
Thousands of others never finished applying, according to the state’s data, as reports of technical glitches mounted. The state also never hired enough people to help residents sign up
the Pathways program has cost federal and state taxpayers more than $86.9 million, three-quarters of which has gone to consultants
The whole thing is a republican boondoggle. They imposed requirements that doomed sign-up, then funneled money to their friends companies, all so they could performatively throw up their hands in despair and say “well, I guess government provided healthcare IS just a waste of tax payer money!” Fucking grifters getting people killed because they’d rather play politics than help people.
If the poor are dying and getting no healthcare it is working as intended for the Republicans in that state.
They could have just straight-up given the participants $13,369 each and saved money.
“If the goal truly is to increase health insurance for low-income Georgians, they are doing it wrong,” said Dr. Harry J. Heiman, a member of a state commission to study comprehensive health coverage and a professor at Georgia State University School of Public Health. “The one thing that Pathways seems to do well is waste taxpayer money on consultants and administrative costs.”
Damn, in terms of guarded PR-speak, that’s about as strong an indictment as there is. Translated to normal plain language, he just accused them of massive purposeful fraud.
Does 75% fewer mean that only one fourth of the estimated number enrolled?
Worse. It took them a year and a half to get as many as they were expecting in a year.
Edit: a year and a half to get a quarter as many as they were expecting in a year.
Who knows. It’s a different time period.
