by Ty Tagami | Oct 20, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia ranked near the bottom of a first-ever analysis of Medicare performance by a foundation that promotes access to quality health care.
The new rankings by The Commonwealth Fund put Georgia in 42nd place out of 50 states and Washington, D.C. — behind Alaska and ahead of New Mexico.
Georgia scored poorly for several reasons. It had a relatively high rate of beneficiaries who took a drug that the elderly should avoid. Its rate for pressure sores among residents of long-stay nursing homes was above the national average.
And people aged 65 and older rated their health as fair or poor more frequently than the norm in surveys. They also reported more difficulty dressing or walking and more often reported loneliness and food insecurity.
Fund staffers involved in the analysis said they included measures such as loneliness and food insecurity because plans in Medicare Advantage — a privately managed alternative to original Medicare — sometimes offer programs to address those issues. State policy also can influence food insecurity, they said.
The Georgia agency that serves Medicare beneficiaries and caregivers had no comment about the findings. The Georgia Department of Human Services merely aids and informs through its State Health Insurance Assistance Program, a spokeswoman said. The federal government administers Medicare.
States with lower health care costs tended to do better in the rankings because recipients shoulder a portion of the expense and are more likely to seek care when they can afford it.
Outcomes on many of the 31 Medicare performance measures, which used data from the last several years, were likely driven by bigger factors than Medicare itself.
States that scored better tended to have health care systems that perform well for everyone, not just those 65 and older who qualify for Medicare.
“When people are sick coming into Medicare, they tend to be really sick when they’re in Medicare,” David Radley, a senior scientist at the Fund, said at a media briefing last week.
Vermont ranked first and Minnesota ranked third. Both have low uninsured rates among younger adults, he noted.
“That means people, if they are sick, if they do have a chronic illness, they’re much more likely to be having that chronic illness managed and keeping that disease in check as they age into Medicare,” he said, “because they’re more likely to be insured and have good access to care younger in life.”
by Ty Tagami | Oct 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — When Meta announced this week that it will implement a filter to make Instagram safe for children, it drew reactions somewhere between skeptical and cynical among Georgians who want to rein in the platform.
The social media company said Tuesday that it would implement a PG-13 filter similar to the ratings system used by the movie industry.
The filter will hide or not recommend posts with strong language, certain risky stunts and other content that could encourage potentially harmful behaviors, such as posts showing marijuana paraphernalia, the company said.
Georgia lawmakers have been studying ways to restrain the industry ever since a bipartisan law they passed last year hit a wall in the courts.
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the Protecting Georgia’s Children on Social Media Act in June after an industry group that represents Meta and other tech companies sued.
Sharon Winkler, who has testified twice to a Senate committee that has been studying other strategies to protect children online, said Meta has failed to fix “known safety issues” for years.
Her son, Alex Peiser, was 17 when he died by suicide in 2017 after breaking up with his girlfriend. Winkler blames Instagram’s algorithm for sending him down a dark hole.
“I’m afraid that this latest announcement is another cynical attempt to lull parents and other concerned adults into a false sense of security about Instagram’s safety for teens,” Winkler said in an email.
The group Fairplay, an online safety advocacy group, cited research by whistleblower Arturo Béjar and said most of Instagram’s promoted safety tools for teens have not worked.
“Splashy press releases won’t keep kids safe, but real accountability and transparency will,” Josh Golin, the group’s executive director, said in a statement. He said Meta should stop lobbying against the Kids Online Safety Act, which is stalled in Congress and would mandate reporting on the effectiveness of safety measures.
Meta disputes the study cited by Fairplay, calling it misleading in a September report about it by the news outlet Reuters.
Laura Ladefian, a certified professional counselor in Atlanta who works with children, said Instagram use is pervasive among her clients, starting around fifth grade and certainly by the end of middle school.
Ladefian testified to the Senate study committee about the addictive power of platforms.
A PG-13 filter would catch some harmful content, but teen users could still bypass it with “coded” language that can expose other children to a higher risk of anxiety, depression and poor self-image through bullying, Ladefian said in an interview. Content is a concern, she said, but the algorithms that drive addictive behavior are the core problem.
“None of that is necessarily accounted for in a filter. It’s the way that peers use and misuse the platforms for social currency,” she said. “My impression is that this is an attempt to calm parents. ‘Hey, we’re doing the thing. We are hearing your concern and here’s how we’re protecting your kids.’ But that would be like telling parents ‘OK, we’ve put these filters on a slot machine, but your kids are still welcome to come.'”
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez called the Instagram PG-13 filter announcement “a reactive and half-baked PR strategy” that he said doesn’t address harmful algorithms and ineffective user age verification.
Torrez’s office has sued Meta for design choices that he said put children at risk of sexual abuse, human trafficking and mental health harms. The lawsuit, which goes to trial Feb. 2, cites Béjar’s research.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is defending Georgia’s law in court. His office had no comment about the new PG-13 filter but said Carr will “push for commonsense measures” that empower parents and keep kids safe online.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican like Carr, championed that law. But Jones did not respond to a request for comment about the new filter policy. Neither did Sen. Shawn Still, R-Johns Creek, the co-chair of the study committee that is exploring an alternative to that law.
Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, the other co-chair, reacted with skepticism to Meta’s announcement, saying by email that the tech industry has a habit of releasing eye-catching headlines and then falling short.
Harrell said her bipartisan committee is focused on taming the algorithms.
“Digital companies want their products to be addictive, because the longer kids stay on their phones, the more profit companies make,” she said. “Our committee is more interested in removing these addictive features than eliminating an occasional bad word.”
by Ty Tagami | Oct 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — State lawmakers wrapped up another marathon hearing on Georgia’s election procedures Thursday, ahead of possible legislative changes next year.
The House election procedures committee took four hours to hear presentations in Americus from nearly a dozen advocates, experts and officials and to listen to brief comments from more than two dozen members of the public.
The themes were like commentary at prior hearings, where people with suspicions about election integrity urged the state to move to hand-marked and hand-counted ballots while others urged lawmakers to avoid making changes to accommodate what they saw as unfounded conspiracy theories.
The hearing featured a clash between the only Democrat on the House panel and Janice Johnston, an appointee on the State Election Board (SEB) who has expressed concerns about the accuracy of election results.
Rep. Saira Draper, D-Atlanta, confronted Johnston for what she saw as inconsistent SEB rulings on election complaints.
Draper noted that board in 2023 had dismissed complaints that Herschel Walker had bought votes when his campaign for U.S. Senate handed out $25 gas cards to potential voters yet had decided recently that Lyft had violated the law by offering discounted rides to voters during elections.
When Draper asked Johnston a hypothetical question — whether she would allow Geoff Duncan, a Democrat running for governor, to hand out gas cards to potential voters — Johnston did not answer. Instead, she said she did not know who he is.
Duncan is Georgia’s former lieutenant governor, a Republican who recently switched parties.
Other presenters asked for more state money to fund local election operations, for more accommodations for voters with disabilities, for multilingual ballots, for full separation of the SEB from the Secretary of State’s office, for more restrictions on absentee voting and for easier ballot access for third parties.
Brian Allen, vice chair of the Libertarian Party of Georgia, said the state requires would-be candidates to obtain signatures from 5% of registered voters to get on the ballot for non-statewide races and 1% for statewide races.
“So, unless something changes, it’s only going to be Democrats and Republicans,” Allen said.
by Ty Tagami | Oct 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A voting rights advocate and longtime city commissioner in Coffee County suffered a loss this week in a federal lawsuit she was pursuing against election officials after she was arrested for helping voters during the contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Olivia Coley-Pearson is suing the county election board and former election supervisor Emily Misty Martin.
Coley-Pearson was an elected commissioner for the city of Douglas in Coffee County when a city policeman arrested her at a polling site during early voting in 2020.
Martin had called police on Coley-Pearson, complaining she was causing a disruption while helping voters.
Police issued a criminal trespass warning, but Coley-Pearson returned later that day and was arrested.
Coley-Pearson had a long history of helping illiterate voters cast their ballots. After the criminal case against her was dismissed in 2022, she sued Martin and the Coffee County Board of Elections, alleging violation of her constitutional rights to free speech and against false arrest.
A federal judge in Atlanta ruled against Coley-Pearson in 2023, so she appealed to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against her Tuesday.
Martin had asked police to keep Coley-Pearson away, but the appeals court reasoned that the responding city police sergeant, not Martin, was responsible for the arrest.
“He saw with his own eyes that Coley-Pearson was violating that trespass warning, which led to her arrest,” the court opinion says. “And he testified, without record evidence showing otherwise, that both the language in the criminal trespass warning and Coley-Pearson’s arrest rested ‘entirely’ with him.”
The Southern Center for Human Rights reported in March that it helped Coley-Pearson with her legal battles, including her successful defense in two criminal cases brought against her for helping voters in 2016.
The organization reported that the city of Douglas, which Coley-Pearson also sued in connection with her 2020 arrest, had settled with her.
Coley-Pearson has since retired from the city commission, and Martin is no longer overseeing elections.
In 2022, the news outlet ProPublica reported that Martin resigned from her election post under pressure in 2021.
The report said Martin, who also used the surnames Hampton and Hayes, had allowed several computer experts into her offices, where they may have had access to election systems — and that they were connected with Trump’s effort to challenge his 2020 loss to Biden.
Misty Hampton was among the 19 co-defendants, including Trump, whom Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged with racketeering in connection with an alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.
The Georgia Court of Appeals disqualified Willis from prosecuting the case due to an appearance of impropriety involving a romantic relationship with a prosecutor she hired for it. The Georgia Supreme Court declined to consider her appeal of that decision in September, effectively removing her from the case.
The Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia must now find a special prosecutor to handle it.
by Ty Tagami | Oct 15, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Jason Carter has thrown his support behind Jason Esteves in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor ahead of next year’s election.
“He’s the new generation of leadership that Georgia needs, and he still has a long record of fighting for our families,” Carter said in a statement released Wednesday by the Esteves campaign.
Carter won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination himself in 2014 only to lose the general election to Republican Nathan Deal. The former state senator and grandson of former president Jimmy Carter said he knows Esteves’ family. He said Esteves, who recently stepped down as a state Senator representing Cobb and Fulton counties and previously served on the Atlanta school board, “has heart and wisdom,” adding, “I love his Columbus roots; he knows that Georgia is more than just Atlanta.”
The endorsement is intended to give Esteves an edge in an increasingly crowded Democratic field that includes political figures with name recognition.
Two of them, former DeKalb County CEO and state labor commissioner Michael Thurmond and former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who recently switched from the Republican party, have won statewide. Former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has been touring the state to enhance recognition outside the capital city, recently meeting with farmers in Albany, The Albany Herald reported.
The winner of the Democratic primary will face whoever emerges from the Republican contest, which includes several competitors with statewide name recognition, as well, including Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump; Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger; and Attorney General Chris Carr, who touted his endorsement by 53 Georgia sheriffs last month.
