ATLANTA – One of the world’s largest privately held companies in the biopharmaceutical industry will invest $250 million in a new plant in Athens-Clarke County, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Wednesday.
California-based Meissner Corp. plans to create more than 1,700 jobs during the next eight years at the facility in Winterville.
Meissner manufactures advanced microfiltration products and therapeutic manufacturing systems for critical pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical applications. Founded in 1984, the company develops and manufactures vital medicines in areas such as oncology, cardiology and immunology.
“We are thrilled to embark on this important expansion and are excited to build our second U.S. manufacturing campus in Athens-Clarke County,” said Christopher Meissner, the company’s president. “The state of Georgia, and Athens-Clarke County in particular, is an ideal location with an incredible talent pool and strong geographic position that allows us to serve clients on the East Coast and throughout the world.”
When the currently planned phases are complete, the new campus will more than double the company’s manufacturing footprint in the U.S. Operations are expected to begin in early 2026.
The company will be hiring for a broad range of roles, including technicians, scientists and engineers as well as information technology and administrative positions. Interested individuals can learn more at www.meissner.com.
The company also plans to work with the University System of Georgia and the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG) through partnerships that will include potential internships and other collaboration opportunities.
“Meissner provides critical equipment that benefits other key industries in Georgia,” said Pat Wilson, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development (DED). “From life sciences to food processing, companies across the state rely on these filtration systems to produce products that are safe for use.
The DED’s Global Commerce team worked in partnership on the project with Invest Athens – Athens-Clarke County’s economic development arm – Georgia Power, and the Technical College of Georgia’s Quick Start workforce development program.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp exercised his veto pen Tuesday less than a week after the General Assembly adjourned for the year.
Kemp vetoed House Bill 319, which prohibits the University System of Georgia Board of Regents from raising tuition or fees more than 3% without the approval of the legislature. The Georgia House of Representatives and state Senate each passed the measure unanimously last Wednesday, the final day of the 2023 legislative session.
In his veto message, Kemp called the bill unconstitutional.
“The Georgia Constitution makes plain the authority to govern, control, and manage the University System and all system institutions is vested in the Board of Regents,” the governor wrote. “Because of the constitutional reservation of authority in the Board of Regents, the legislation cannot be adopted without the approval of Georgians through exercise of their franchise.”
Tuesday’s veto was the first of Kemp’s second four-year term as governor, which began in January. Georgia governors typically don’t issue vetoes until near the end of the period of 40 calendar days they have following the end of each General Assembly session to act on the bills lawmakers pass each year.
However, there are exceptions, notably the late-March veto then-Gov. Nathan Deal issued in 2016 rejecting a controversial religious freedom bill civil rights advocates and business leaders opposed as potentially discriminating against Georgia’s LGBTQ community.
The provision in the legislation concerning tuition and fees in House Bill 319 was a small part of a broader bill aimed at abolishing the Georgia Higher Education Assistance Corp., which is no longer needed, said state Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, chairman of the House Higher Education Commission and the bill’s sponsor.
The Senate amended the bill last Wednesday to add the tuition provision, Martin said.
“I respect the governor’s decision,” he said. “We can do [the rest of the bill] next year.”
The Board of Regents has held the line on tuition recently, voting five times in the last seven years not to raise tuition at most of the university system’s 26 institutions.
Georgia seniors Peggy Mitchell, left, and Gwen Brightman, right, both had to delay their scheduled cataract removal surgeries due to insurance challenges.
ATLANTA – Peggy Mitchell, 71, was having trouble driving at night, so she knew she could not wait any longer to have the cataract clouding her right eye removed.
The lively Alpharetta resident had scheduled her surgery for Nov. 22, before Thanksgiving, and arranged for a friend to drive her to the surgery and back home. She had already had a cataract on her left eye removed the prior year without a hitch.
But her carefully laid plans ground to a halt at the last minute when her Medicare Advantage insurer, Aetna, denied approval for the routine, vision-saving surgery most older adults need at some point.
Mitchell and her doctor appealed the denial but did not receive a response in time, forcing Mitchell to postpone the procedure for more than a month, until after Christmas. Mitchell’s ophthalmologist, Dr. Susanne Hewitt of North Fulton Eye Center, came into the office during her holiday vacation to perform the surgery for Mitchell and others.
What’s unusual about this situation is that Aetna Medicare Advantage requires prior approvals for cataract surgery only in Georgia and Florida – not in any other states. Aetna Medicare Advantage plans covered 132,414 Georgians in 2022, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).
Humana instituted a similar policy—only in Georgia—last fall. Humana Medicare Advantage plans covered 264,010 Georgians last year, according to KFF.
In contrast to the insurers’ Georgia policies requiring approvals, traditional Medicare – not run by insurance companies — does not require prior authorizations for most procedures, including cataract surgery.
Ophthalmologists and patients say Aetna and Humana’s policies delay care, put Georgia seniors at risk, and create burdensome administrative requirements, only for the surgeries to be approved in the end.
“What happened in that one month would be my question,” Mitchell said. “All that frustration and denial … I can’t tell you how it felt.”
As a self-described “healthy senior,” Mitchell had rarely used her Aetna health insurance and always paid her monthly premium. She was so certain her surgery would be approved that she started taking the expensive eyedrops needed to prepare. That proved a waste when Aetna did not approve her surgery for the originally scheduled date.
“Aetna has been engaged in a 10-year relationship with iCare Health Solutions to manage ophthalmology and optometry services in Florida,” Aetna spokeswoman Kimberly Eafano said. “Almost two years ago, Aetna expanded this arrangement to include the state of Georgia, where iCare also has a community presence.”
Humana instituted a similar policy for its Medicare Advantage enrollees – only in Georgia – last fall. Humana said the unique Georgia policy is due to its relationship with iCare.
iCare did not comment despite multiple requests.
Georgia doctors are worried the delays put patient safety at risk.
“Any type of delay – even a few weeks or a couple of months – that’s usually a safety issue,” said Hewitt, Mitchell’s ophthalmologist. Many patients put off seeking treatment for cataracts because surgery, even a routine one like cataract removal, can be scary.
“I have patients that say they can’t see to drive on the road,” Hewitt said. “[They] follow the car in front of them. If that car turns and they’re not turning that way, they’re really in trouble because they can’t follow them anymore.”
“If you have a patient who comes in as having a stated problem, and it’s backed up by the examination, then we should act on that. We shouldn’t be telling them no, just for the sake of saying no.”
“Aetna’s policies have not improved and continue to limit patient access to surgical care,” Berg said. “I encourage patients with Aetna to switch to a different Medicare plan.”
The problem has drawn the attention of the state’s congressional delegation.
“These policies put Georgia [Medicare Advantage] patients at greater risk of falls and accidents as their vision continues to deteriorate while they wait for surgery,” the state’s Democratic representatives, led by Atlanta’s Rep. David Scott, wrote to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal health-care regulator, last December.
“Georgia [Medicare Advantage] beneficiaries have faithfully paid premiums every month,’’ they wrote. “They deserve the same access to sight-restoring surgery that Aetna and Humana … beneficiaries have in other states.”
Five Republican representatives led by Rep. Buddy Carter of Savannah wrote a similar letter.
“Aetna’s and Humana’s prior authorization policies create obstacles to this common surgery for both patients and their physicians,” the GOP congressmen wrote.
But neither Carter nor Scott has received a response from CMS, their spokespeople said.
“CMS is committed to ensuring that people with Medicare Advantage have timely access to medically necessary care,” a CMS spokesperson said in response to a query about the Georgia situation.
A proposed regulatory change that could take effect in 2024 would require Medicare Advantage plans to ensure that “people with Medicare Advantage receive the same access to medically necessary care they would receive in traditional Medicare.”
Meanwhile, the problems in Georgia continue. Gwen Brightman, a 67-year-old Aetna Medicare Advantage customer from Newnan, was forced to delay her surgery from Feb. 9 to Feb. 23 because the company did not provide her with timely approval.
Even the delayed surgery was approved at the last minute, said Brightman, who has a full-time job.
“I spent approximately two hours on the phone desperately trying to make the deadline and didn’t get the approval until the late afternoon [the day before],” she said. “This caused me extreme and unnecessary stress. Between the strain on my eye and the never-ending requests and requirements, I was a wreck. No one else should have to experience this nonsense.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The U.S. Army will begin unit-by-unit inspections of on-post privatized housing at Fort Gordon near Augusta next week.
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., has called attention to the poor condition of privatized housing at both Fort Gordon and Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas, launching an investigation last year.
“After the eight-month investigation … I demanded that the Army conduct unit-by-unit inspections of every single privatized housing unit across the country,” Ossoff, chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said late last week. “To see real action happening is a message to military families that their health and safety remains our top priority.”
Last April, Ossoff revealed the results of the investigation at a hearing held by his subcommittee, which heard testimony about the failure of one of the nation’s leading providers of privatized military housing -Balfour Beatty – to make needed repairs and respond to environmental hazards including mold infestations inside the homes.
The Army announced last May that it would conduct its own investigation into the conditions of housing units at Fort Gordon. Ossoff introduced legislation last fall calling for greater transparency and improved oversight of privatized military housing across the nation.
More recently, Ossoff announced he is launching a bipartisan inquiry working with Florida’s two Republican senators – Marco Rubio and Rick Scott – aimed at improving data collection about conditions at privatized housing that pose a threat to military families’ health and safety.
ATLANTA – The state Board of Education has posted a new set of English and language arts (ELA) standards and asked the public to weigh in by May 1.
The public comment period is the next step in a lengthy process of revising the state’s standards for ELA education across all grade levels.
“Truly, the documents that you have before you represent the collective voice, the collective work, the collective expertise of educators in Georgia,” said April Aldridge, deputy superintendent of teaching and learning at the Georgia Department of Education, during a board meeting last week.
“One of the things that we really knew the public said we needed to work on was clarifying language … making sure that the terminology was consistent.”
One major change is the introduction of a new category of standards – called “foundations” – for kindergarten through 5th grade. These standards are designed to ensure Georgia students develop strong literacy skills in the early grades and include a focus on phonics skills. The General Assembly passed legislation last week also aimed at bolstering early literacy in Georgia.
The other standards are divided across three domains: language, practices and texts.
The “practices” category has been redesigned to stretch across K-12 rather than being grade-specific.
The practices standards specify that students will develop their identities as readers and writers and learn to interpret written materials in context. One standard specifies that students should read like a writer, while another specifies that students should write like a reader – meaning they should learn to “construct texts with the audience’s experience in mind.”
The texts standards do not specify which books students should read but rather the expectations for how they learn to engage with and interpret books and other written materials. The language category focuses on grammar and vocabulary.
The standards were created by a working group of 300 educators from across the state. A Citizens Review Committee made up of parents, students and business leaders and an Academic Review Committee that included experts also provided input.
An earlier draft of the standards was posted last November. More than 14,000 Georgians have already provided feedback on the new standards, according to the department.
If adopted, the new English and language arts standards would be implemented in the 2025-2026 school year.
