by Ty Tagami | Jun 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Federal budget cuts aimed at Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act could eventually cost 16 million Americans their health insurance coverage, and Georgia would not be immune from the impact, a health care advocacy group is warning.
The state already lags most of the country in The Commonwealth Fund’s performance indicators. Their new report, 2025 Scorecard on State Health System Performance, ranked Georgia 45th — behind all of its neighbors. The scoring is derived from indicators such as health care access and affordability, infant mortality rates and potentially avoidable emergency room visits.
The rankings are based on 2023 data, when 16% of Georgians from age 19 to 64 were uninsured compared with a national average of 11%.
Health care cuts in the budget reconciliation bill by the U.S. House of Representatives would reduce the insured population in two ways, the report says.
It predicts more than 8 million would become uninsured in less than a decade if Affordable Care Act (the ACA) premium tax credits are allowed to expire and new marketplace enrollment requirements are implemented.
And it says about 8 million more would become uninsured if proposed Medicaid work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks are enacted.
Georgia already has work requirements for its Pathways to Coverage program, a limited form of Medicaid expansion rolled out by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2023.
If the rest of the country imposes such work requirements, other states will see higher administrative costs and lower enrollment, said Sara Collins, a vice president at The Commonwealth Fund. Georgia enrolled a relatively small number in Medicaid “at an enormous federal and state expense that far outweighed what it would have cost just to do a normal Medicaid expansion,” she said.
Kemp has declined to expand Medicaid more broadly, fearing — perhaps prophetically — that Congress would reduce funding and force states to shoulder a larger share of the costs.
But Georgia still won’t be immune if the cuts come, Collins said. Because fewer Georgians had access to Medicaid, more of them chose the marketplace subsidized by the ACA tax credits.
They may face big premium increases as soon as November, with many falling off the ACA rolls by next year, she said. “The passage of the bill would still have a very big effect on people in non-expansion states like Georgia,” she said, adding that hospitals, doctors and other medical providers who rely on insured patients would also be affected.
by Dave Williams | Jun 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Republican Tim Echols Tuesday cruised to his party’s nomination for another term on the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC), which regulates utilities in the Peach State.
Echols captured 75.8% of the vote in the PSC’s District 2 to just 24.2% for challenger Lee Muns of Columbia County, according to unofficial results. Echols, who lives near Hoschton near Athens, will take on Democrat Alicia Johnson of Savannah in November.
Meanwhile, former Atlanta City Councilwoman Keisha Sean Waites was by far the top vote-getter in a three-way race for the Democratic nomination in PSC District 3 but was forced into a runoff next month with second-place finisher Peter Hubbard. Waites won 46% of the vote, well short of the 50%-plus-one-vote margin needed to avoid a runoff.
Hubbard, a clean-energy advocate, finished second with 33.3% of the vote, with former utilities executive Robert Jones in third and out of the running with 20.7%. The winner of the July 15 runoff between Waites and Hubbard will face incumbent Republican Commissioner Fitz Johnson in November.
Echols was elected to the PSC in 2010 and reelected in 2016. His term was supposed to expire in 2022 but was extended when the election was postponed by a lawsuit challenging the way members of the commission are elected. The plaintiffs argued that electing commissioners statewide instead of by district dilutes violates the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act by making it more difficult for Black voters to elect a candidate of their choice.
While the case was pending, the 2022 and 2024 PSC elections were postponed. As a result, Echols got three more years on his six-year term, while Fitz Johnson – appointed to the commission in 2021 – didn’t have to face Georgia voters until this year.
A federal appeals court eventually ruled against the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, leaving the system of statewide elections of members of the PSC intact.
The commission’s District 2 covers Fulton, Clayton, and DeKalb counties. District 3 stretches from Atlanta’s eastern and southeastern suburbs to Savannah.
by Dave Williams | Jun 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A state lawmaker from a city with a Hispanic majority marked the 13th anniversary of the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program Tuesday by urging Congress to make its protections permanent.
The city of Dalton makes up a large part of Georgia Republican Rep. Kasey Carpenter’s 4th House District in Northwest Georgia. It is widely known as the “Carpet Capital of the World.”
“It is a manufacturing hub for the state and a very diverse community,” Carpenter said during a news conference at the Georgia Capitol.
DACA was created in 2012 by the Obama administration to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation. Carpenter said the program has played an important role in Dalton’s progress.
“With DACA, I saw lives change, a workforce solidified, and a community strengthened,” he said.
Veronica Maldonado, CEO of the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said Georgia’s undocumented immigrants pay more than $61 million in state and local taxes each year and have more than $850 million in spending power. More than 90% are either employed or in school.
“They don’t take. They contribute,” Maldonado said. “Georgia can’t afford to lose them.”
Currently, DACA is in legal limbo. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in January against the program.
At the same time, the appellate court also approved a stay that allows current DACA recipients to continue renewing their status and receiving work authorization. However, no new applications are being accepted.
Maldonado urged members of Georgia’s congressional delegation to get behind efforts to make DACA protections permanent.
For his part, Carpenter introduced legislation into the state House of Representatives this year that would allow certain non-citizen students to pay in-state tuition to attend either a Georgia public college or university or one of the state’s technical colleges. However, the bill failed to make it through the House Higher Education Committee.
by Ty Tagami | Jun 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia will join other states and U.S. territories in a settlement that extracts $7.4 billion from Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, as recompense for their role in the opioid crisis that ravaged the country for a generation.
“For years, the Sackler family profited off other people’s pain – destroying lives and families in Georgia and throughout the country,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said in announcing the decision to join the settlement. “While nothing can undo the harm caused, this settlement will provide our state with significant resources to support those struggling with addiction and Georgians in recovery.”
Georgia is positioned to receive $126 million for addiction treatment, prevention, and recovery services, Carr’s office said Monday, adding that local governments will be asked to join the settlement contingent upon bankruptcy proceedings.
The settlement would end the Sackler family’s control of Purdue and their ability to sell opioids in the United States, Carr’s office said. It comes after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a prior multistate settlement last year.
The Sacklers and Purdue would make installment payments, with the family contributing $1.5 billion in the first year and the company paying $900 million, the annual amounts declining thereafter.
If approved, the settlement would also open to the public more than 30 million documents related to the opioid business of Purdue and the Sacklers, according to the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office.
The settlement includes five U.S. territories and Washington, D.C., plus all states except Oklahoma, which, according to Reuters and other reports, had already reached its own $270 million settlement in 2019.
by Dave Williams | Jun 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A Gwinnett County man has been charged in federal court with threatening two U.S. senators and their families.
Robert Davis Forney, 25, of Duluth allegedly called the offices of Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Deb Fischer, R-Neb., in January and left voice mails threating sexual violence against both senators and members of Cruz’ family.
“Targeting public officials with threatening messages is a serious federal crime,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Paul Brown. “There is no place for political violence or threats of violence in the United States. We will not hesitate to arrest and charge others who engage in similar criminal conduct.”
Forney was arraigned on Monday, the same day a man in Minnesota accused of murdering one Democratic state lawmaker and shooting another made his first court appearance. Vance Boelter, 57, was captured Sunday after an extensive manhunt, a day after the killings.
Boelter allegedly had prepared a list of 45 elected elected officials – all Democrats – he allegedly was planning to murder.
Republicans and Democrats alike, including President Donald Trump, condemned the shootings and said political violence should have no place in America.
The Georgia case is part of a nationwide initiative aimed at eliminating cartels and other multi-national criminal organizations. Operation Take Back America uses resources from the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces and Project Safe Neighborhood.
