DPS Commissioner Col. Mark McDonough talks about the firing of 30 troopers on Jan. 29, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Georgia’s public safety chief offered up his resignation Thursday in the wake of a cheating scandal in which 30 new state patrol officers were fired last month.
Col. Mark McDonough, commissioner of the Georgia Department
of Public Safety, is poised to step down after the agency’s board accepted his
resignation at a meeting Thursday morning.
McDonough was asked to resign by Gov. Brian Kemp, according to the governor’s office. His resignation comes in the wake of the trainee cheating scandal as well as a crippling cyberattack in July and a break-in at the State Capitol in late September.
“My family and I thank Col. McDonough for his dedicated
service, leadership and sacrifice,” Kemp said in a statement. “We wish him the
very best in the years ahead.”
The governor’s office did not have details Thursday morning
on who would replace McDonough.
The public safety department houses the Georgia State
Patrol, the Motor Carrier Compliance Division and the Capitol Police Division.
A veteran U.S. Marine, McDonough was a state trooper in Blue
Ridge before being tapped as the commanding officer of the state patrol. He was
picked for the commissioner post by then-Gov. Nathan Deal in 2011.
The public safety department was peppered with problems in
recent months.
In July, a ransomware attack downed the agency’s main
computer server, forcing troopers to log citations and reports manually.
In September, a vandal smashed through a glass door,
shattered several light fixtures and tore a gash in the framed portrait of
former Gov. Samuel Marvin Griffin.
Last month, McDonough announced an entire State Patrol cadet
class was canned for collectively cheating on an online exam required to use
the agency’s radar speed detectors. The trainees circulated test questions
among themselves in their dorm rooms to pass what they feared was unduly
difficult exam, according to an internal investigation report.
Third-party companies with a large say in setting prescription drug prices would face tighter regulations in Georgia under a bill state lawmakers mulled over this week.
Companies called pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs) act as go-betweens for prescribers and insurance companies that contract with health insurers to negotiate lower drug prices for patients.
But critics accuse them of muddling up the process, prompting increases in drug prices and unnecessary delays in filling prescriptions.
Senate Bill 313 would require pharmacy benefits-manager companies to adhere close to national average drug prices set by the federal government when reimbursing local pharmacies. The state Department of Insurance would monitor those reimbursement amounts.
The bill would also prohibit PBMs from charging extra fees
or causing delays when requests are made for lower-priced drugs. Benefits
managers would also have to distribute all rebates from drug makers to
patients, rather than keeping a portion for themselves.
The bill follows legislation the General Assembly passed last year that prevents benefits-manager companies from steering patients to associated pharmacies with potentially higher costs.
Sen. Dean Burke, Senate Bill 313’s sponsor, said it aims to
boost transparency over how drug prices are established between health plans,
hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefits managers.
“When it gets to [patients], there’s been so many convolutions it’s really hard to understand the process,” said Burke, R-Bainbridge. “What we’re trying to do is shine a little light on that.”
Sen. Dean Burke (R-Bainbridge).
Hospital and pharmacy groups have praised the bill,
describing it as a means to peel back a layer of the already complicated
prescription drug marketplace. They say scaling down the role of third-party
companies could also keep smaller pharmacies in Georgia from going out of
business amid increasing drug costs.
“What we’re seeing is self-dealing on the grandest of scales
in health care by the pharmacy benefits managers,” said Greg Reybold, vice
president of public policy for the Georgia Pharmacy Association.
Jennifer Shannon, a pharmacist from Johns Creek, said she
deals every day with paperwork hurdles and denials from benefits-manager
companies that she claimed steer her customers to costlier drugs to receive rebates.
The rigmarole risks harming people who end up not receiving medications they
were prescribed, she said.
“Our patients that we care for are being stripped out of our
hands and put into harm’s way,” Shannon said. “It is not right. It is wrong.
And at my core, it hurts.”
Benefits-manager companies largely argue the bill would
hamstring them when negotiating with big pharmaceutical companies for lower
prices. That could drive up costs overall by giving drug makers free rein to
set prices as they please, said Scott Turner, vice president of public affairs
for the national trade group Pharmaceutical Care Management Association.
The bill also ignores the influences of other players like
manufacturers and wholesalers in the complex series of transactions that lead
to final drug costs, said Jesse Weathington, a consultant representing the
insurer group Georgia Association of Health Plans.
“Our contention is that if transparency is a good thing,
then it would be good to have transparency across the entire spectrum of actors
in this ecosystem and not just the pharmacy benefits managers,” Weathington
said Wednesday.
Some lawmakers on the full Senate Insurance and Labor
Committee also cast doubt on the measure earlier this week. Sen. Larry Walker
III, R-Perry, said he wondered if the proposed rules would hurt any
benefits-manager companies that have helped lower prices.
“It seems like they wouldn’t exist if they didn’t add value
somewhere along the line besides themselves,” Walker said Monday.
The Senate subcommittee considering the bill did not take any action after a three-hour hearing Wednesday.
Burke’s legislation is part of a slate of health-care measures filed in the 2020 legislative session that started last month. Other efforts include twin measures to end so-called “surprise billing” that hits Georgians with unexpectedly large hospital bills.
ATLANTA – A variety of land conservation, restoration and
parks projects across the state would land the first round of funding through
the Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Act voters approved in November 2018.
A state House subcommittee Wednesday approved 14 projects to
be funded with $20 million raised through a new tax on purchases of sporting goods.
More than 83% of Georgia voters ratified a constitutional amendment creating
the tax.
“We have a growing state,” Mark Williams, commissioner of
the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR), told members of the subcommittee.
“We need to have a place for people to spend time with their families and enjoy
the outdoors.”
State agencies, local governments and nonprofit conservation
groups submitted 58 project applications last year worth more than $78 million.
An advisory board created by the legislation worked with the DNR to select
projects based on their conservation and recreational value and whether the
benefits they would bring would be or regional or statewide significance.
“We had no bad projects,” said Rob Stokes, the program
coordinator for the DNR. “It just got so competitive these are the cream of the
crop for this year.”
Among the projects selected were six the DNR submitted,
including $3.5 million for the first phase of the planned acquisition of the Ceylon
property and $2.6 million to acquire 7,000 acres of undeveloped land at Cabin
Bluff. Portions of both tidal marshland properties in Camden County are slated
to become new wildlife management areas.
Three of the other DNR projects would involve restoration of
longleaf pine forests, including one restoration project related to recovery
from the damage wreaked by Hurricane Michael in October 2018.
Other projects on the list include parks projects in Forsyth
County and the city of Johns Creek, $2.3 million to fund a portion of a planned
canoeing and kayaking trail on the Chattahoochee River that eventually will
connect Lake Lanier with Chattahoochee Bend State Park, and an extension of the
Atlanta Beltline’s Westside Trail.
Under the legislation that created the program, the project
list the House subcommittee adopted Wednesday will go straight to the Georgia
Senate. However, the House will get to weigh in on the $20 million allocated
for the program’s first year as part of the budget process.
AT A GLANCE
Here are the 14 projects to be funded during the first year
of the Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Act:
Applicant Project
name Funding requested
DNR Coastal Resources Division Noyes Cut Ecosystem Restoration $1.7
million
DNR Wildlife Resources Division Cabin Bluff Acquisition $2.6
million
DNR Wildlife Resources Division Ceylon Acquisition Phase 1 $3.5
million
ATLANTA – Plastic grocery bags would be banned in Georgia under a Senate bill filed in the 2020 legislative session.
Sponsored by Sen. Donzella James, Senate Bill 280 would prohibit retailers from handing out plastic carryout bags starting next year.
The legislation would exempt several bag
styles including plastic wrappers, newspaper sleeves, take-out bags and trash
bags.
James, D-Atlanta, said she aims to curb
plastic pollution after trying unsuccessfully two decades ago to push
legislation calling for Georgia to be a “zero waste” state by this year.
Sen. Donzella James.
“We want to make an effort to one day, if
we can’t have zero waste by 2020, maybe 2030,” James said at a Senate Economic
Development and Tourism Committee hearing Wednesday.
James said she is open to changing the
start date for the ban to 2024. She also said her bill takes aim specifically
at grocery bags.
“We didn’t want to just ban all bags. We
wanted to start there,” James said. “If we have great success, then maybe the
state could consider more.”
Single-use plastic bags that do not
biodegrade tend to wind up in environmentally sensitive areas like rivers and
streams, endangering wildlife and polluting natural settings. Environmental
group representatives said Wednesday that Georgians discard more than 1 million
tons of plastic annually, of which less than 10% is recycled.
Plastic-bag bans have passed recently in
states like California, New York and Connecticut, and cities including San
Francisco and Austin, Texas. Some large companies like Kroger and Starbucks
have also announced policies to phase out plastic bag use in the coming years.
Food retailers in the state support
curbing plastic use but are wary of an outright ban that could spur more
reliance on other non-recyclable products like garbage bags, said Kathy Kuzava,
president of the Georgia Food Industry Association.
She said a better approach might be to
encourage more voluntary plastic-reduction policies to help stores transform
their customers’ habits on bag use.
“It’s really trying to get the customers
used to a change in mentality,” Kuzava said Wednesday. “And I think that’s
happening.”
The bill has backing from several
environmental groups in Georgia as well as the Millennial Civil Rights
Campaign, a social advocacy group led by young adults. Its founder and
president, Toas Wynn, said a bag ban would be the next logical step with many
stores already phasing out plastics.
“We’re not looking to do something that
is completely out of the norm nor has any indications of a trend that is not
already taking place,” Taos said.
But Senate Economic Development and
Tourism Committee Chairman Frank Ginn said he thinks the bill needs some
revising before it could move forward.
Ginn, R-Danielsville, singled out the
need to clarify whether reused plastic bags could be exempt, such as for
cleaning up dog waste.
“Who knows that they’re used for?” Ginn
said. “I reuse mine in a lot of different ways.”
ATLANTA – Twin measures moving through the state legislature would ban the practice of “surprise billing” in Georgia, in which patients wind up with unexpectedly big bills months after hospital visits.
Republican lawmakers in the Georgia House
and Senate have filed identical legislation that would remove Georgia hospital
patients from the billing equation, leaving it to medical providers and
insurance companies to work out their cost differences.
The legislation still faces pushback on
how costs would be worked out between insurers and medical providers, but
representatives from both sides agreed at a Senate Health and Human Services
Committee hearing Tuesday that the finish line is close after years of debate
over the issue.
“We really think it’s time to put this to
bed and protect Georgians,” said Laura Colbert, executive director of the
nonprofit Georgians for a Healthy Future.
Dubbed “surprise” or “balance” billing, the extra hospital charges result from specialty procedures like anesthesiology or emergency-room surgery completed by out-of-network specialists. They can add hundreds or thousands of dollars to a patient’s final bill without their knowing in advance.
State lawmakers have tried for the past
five years to tamp down surprise billing, said Rep. Lee Hawkins, sponsor of the
House legislation.
He and others traced hold-ups to
disagreements over how insurers and medical specialists should settle
out-of-network costs, particularly if disputes arise that need formal
arbitration.
Medical specialists argue they are
underpaid for performing complex technical procedures under in-network
insurance arrangements, while insurers claim those specialists charge too much,
Hawkins said.
Hawkins, R-Gainesville, said he just
wants legislation to pass that will leave patients out of the haggling involved
with hospital costs.
“The No.-1 thing is to make sure that
there’s no more surprise billing,” Hawkins said. “Everything else is making
sure it works with the providers and the insurers.”
Gov. Brian Kemp has thrown his support
behind the bills, calling them “compromise legislation” worthy of passage.
“While there is more work to do,” Kemp
said in a statement, “I am committed to working with the General Assembly,
patients, providers and insurance carriers to pass this legislation and put
patients first.”
Hawkins’ House Bill 888 and counterpart Senate Bill 359, by Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, would require that insurers pay out-of-network physicians either a “contracted amount” set in 2017 for various procedures, or a higher charge that the insurer proposes.
Disagreements between the two sides would
prompt an arbitration process overseen by the state Department of Insurance,
which would contract with outside private arbitration companies to decide the
final bill.
All arbitration decisions and final
payments would be logged in a database kept by the insurance department. That
data would factor into annual rate adjustments for the contracted amounts that
serve as a baseline for what insurers reimburse for out-of-network procedures,
Hawkins said.
Those aspects of the bill – arbitration and the database – are critical because they would shed light on how much insurance companies actually pay providers for specialty services, Hawkins said.
“We never see exactly what the insurance
company was paying the physician,” he said.
Some representatives for medical
providers and insurance groups still want tweaks to the legislation,
particularly on the finer points for how the contracted amounts would be set.
They aired their suggestions at a committee hearing on Hufstetler’s bill
Tuesday.
Victor Moldovan, an attorney representing
the Independent Doctors Association of Georgia, said the 2017 baseline
reimbursement rates may be too low for specialty providers to stay in business.
He also called for distinguishing more between payments for emergency services
and non-emergency services.
“At the end of the day, this is not a
free cost,” Moldovan said. “There has to be a way to manage these issues … in a
way that’s fair to not just the patient, but the providers as well.”
Some physician groups also want tighter
rules on what kind of information would be logged into the new all-payer
database, the details of which may end up being worked out in separate
legislation.
No action was taken at Tuesday’s
committee hearing.
Hawkins’ and Hufstetler’s bills are part of a slate of health-care measures filed in the 2020 legislative session that started last month. Other efforts include a bill by Sen. Dean Burke, R-Bainbridge, aimed at restricting how third-party companies can influence prescription drug prices in Georgia.
The surprise-billing legislation will
likely see some changes as it winds through the Georgia General Assembly,
Hawkins said. But state officials and lawmakers are determined to follow
through on the issue this year, having framed surprise billing as a top
priority in the session.
“If we do not get this solved, I think it
would be a failure of the session,” said Senate Health and Human Services
Committee Chairman Ben Watson, R-Savannah.
