Budget cuts proposed for doctor-training programs at several universities in Georgia amid the coronavirus pandemic drew pushback Monday from some state lawmakers worried maternal care and rural hospitals would suffer with less funding.
Lawmakers homed in on proposed cuts to grant funds totaling roughly $4.5 million for Morehouse School of Medicine and $3.7 million for Mercer University’s School of Medicine to run health-care workforce training programs.
Less spending particularly for Morehouse could hit programs to curb maternal mortality in Georgia especially hard, warned Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Community Health Subcommittee at a hearing Monday.
Those cuts would combine chronic underfunding for maternal care in Georgia with the disproportionate impact of coronavirus on black residents, who also experience high rates of maternal mortality, said Sen. Valencia Seay, D-Riverdale.
“At the end of the day, childbirth should not be where black women are dying,” Seay said Monday. “And to get the proper care, we can’t keep cutting the funds that are helping us to turn out those that are willing and capable of doing what everybody deserves – and that’s access to health care.”
State agencies were asked last month to hand in proposals for cutting their budgets by 14% totaling about $3.5 billion due to the coronavirus-prompted economic slowdown. Gov. Brian Kemp signaled last week agencies may only need to cut their budgets by 11% starting July 1 as state tax revenues are not declining as much as expected.
Funding for maternal care was a sticking point for many lawmakers during earlier budget negotiations, as Kemp called for 4% and 6% cuts to most state spending. Morehouse’s maternal mortality program was spared $500,000 in cuts originally proposed in the 2020 fiscal year budget that lawmakers declined to implement.
On Monday, Seay highlighted how the virus-inspired spending cuts have once again put funding for the Morehouse maternal mortality program in doubt. She and others who spoke at the hearing cited data indicating black women in Georgia are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related issues than white women, according to a legislative study committee report released earlier this year.
Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, agreed the cuts would hurt Morehouse as well as Mercer’s doctor-training program, both of which help boost physician employment at hospitals in rural parts of the state that tend to go underserved.
Orrock also singled out Morehouse as a historically black institution that plays a critical role in increasing the number of black and other persons of color trained in the health-care field.
“There’s a huge need for it,” Orrock said Monday. “I think it’s an important way for us to demonstrate as a legislature that we understand the need to do everything we can to resource that effort.”
Maternal care advocates also voiced opposition Monday to the proposed cuts in grant funding, which is administered by the state Board of Health Care Workforce. Breana Lipscomb, the nonprofit Center for Reproductive Rights’ maternal health campaign manager, urged lawmakers to restore $500,000 in funding for Morehouse as well as separate funding on the chopping block for certain maternal mental health programs in the state.
“We are very deeply concerned that the currently proposed cuts will reverse the progress we’ve been making in this state related to maternal mortality,” Lipscomb said Monday.
Sen. Dean Burke, R-Bainbridge, who chairs the subcommittee, stressed none of the proposed budget cuts for state agencies have been settled yet but that lawmakers are “not going to be able to do everything we may like to do.”
Monday’s hearing figured as one of several that budget-writing lawmakers in the Georgia Senate have held in recent weeks to hasten drafting of the 2021 fiscal year budget. The General Assembly is poised to reconvene next week to close out the 2020 legislative session over a hectic two-and-a-half weeks during which the budget will take center stage.
This story has been corrected to reflect that the name of the school is in fact “Morehouse School of Medicine.”