by Ty Tagami | Sep 11, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Health-care advocates warned Thursday that Georgia residents who have to find their own insurance in the government marketplace should expect significant rate increases next year.
Insurance companies are filing rate increase requests with regulators, arguing that federal budget cuts and the end of COVID-19 tax credits are the main drivers, said Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA.
“These are individual workers and working families who simply don’t get coverage on the job or through public programs like Medicaid or Medicare,” Wright said.
Wright said affected workers include retail and restaurant employees, ride-hail and food-delivery drivers, beauticians, barbers, plumbers and other self-employed workers.
Georgia’s government marketplace is called Georgia Access. The state also offers Pathways to Coverage for those nearer the poverty level.
The group KFF calculates that a half million Georgians could lose coverage. Another group, Georgians for a Healthy Future (GHF), puts that number at 340,000, estimating an average rate increase of 75%. (The smaller figure is attributed to the expiration of the tax credits alone. The larger figure includes tax credits and budget cuts.)
“If costs soar and coverage slips away, the consequences will ripple through every part of our state at almost every income level,” said Whitney Griggs, health policy director for GHF.
Georgia’s Office of Insurance was not immediately available to clarify the numbers, but it will not be long before insurance shoppers see the result, with enrollment for 2026 likely to start around November.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 10, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia Democrats are losing a member of the state Senate as he gears up his campaign for next year’s Democratic primary for governor.
Sen. Jason Esteves, D-Atlanta, said Wednesday that he is resigning from the Senate “because the best way I can serve the people of Georgia is by putting my whole heart into this campaign.”
The former Atlanta school board member is contesting two prominent Democrats for the party nomination.
Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is running, as is former Georgia Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond, a former state lawmaker who served as the appointed school superintendent for DeKalb County in the 2010s and then as the elected CEO of DeKalb.
Senate Democrats issued a statement praising Esteves’ efforts during three legislative sessions, saying he worked to expand access to health care, invest in public schools, and reduce the cost of housing for seniors.
Esteves’ campaign touted his involvement in legislation that will save Atlanta seniors $1,000 on their annual taxes, in passage of a constitutional amendment to cap increases in home values and in the defeat of the Buckhead City movement.
Whoever emerges from the Democratic primary will face the winner of the Republican nomination.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones is campaigning in the GOP primary against state Attorney General Chris Carr.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 10, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A former Democrat who switched to Republican in the Georgia House of Representatives is challenging longtime State School Superintendent Richard Woods for next year’s GOP nomination.
Mesha Mainor, who clashed with Democrats over her support for private school vouchers, joins several Republicans who want to prevent Woods from winning a fourth term as the state’s education leader.
In July, Fred “Bubba” Longgrear, superintendent of the Candler County School District, said he would challenge Woods in the primary. Randell E. Trammel, who lives in Cartersville and is CEO of the Center for Civic Engagement, announced his candidacy in June, nearly a year after Nelva M. Lee. She is a Locust Grove entrepreneur Gov. Brian Kemp had appointed to a two-year term on the state Board of Community Health in 2021.
Mainor cast herself as an independent voice, saying she switched from Democrat to Republican because they represented “authoritarianism.”
“I left the Democratic Party because I refused to follow the political agenda of radical Democrats and the American Federation of Teachers that puts government authoritarianism over parents and children,” Mainor said Wednesday.
The former state representative from west Atlanta switched parties in 2023 after Democrats and some Republicans united to stop legislation to create a school voucher program. Mainor voted with the Republican majority to pass the voucher bill when it returned in early 2024.
But her district provided a deep well of votes for Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election, and she lost her seat to a Democrat in the November 2024 general election.
The state school superintendent leads the state Department of Education and is responsible for distributing state and federal funds to Georgia’s 180 school districts. The superintendent must ensure those funds are used appropriately and must make sure schools follow the law and state Board of Education rules. The superintendent can also make recommendations to the state board.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 9, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia’s public health agency is awaiting federal recommendations before setting its own COVID-19 vaccination policy but is willing to “play a larger leadership role” if there are disagreements, the state’s top health official said Tuesday.
Georgia might have to set its own course and priorities and “ensure that accurate information is out” if it disagrees with pending guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its advisors, state Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey told the Georgia Board of Public Health at their September meeting.
If federal leadership is “absent” on the vaccination question, she said, “we have to step up and make sure that the public is being served.”
Toomey’s message was delivered as reassurance after misgivings were expressed by several board members.
Dr. James Curran, the board chairman and a former CDC employee, lamented “turmoil” at the federal agency under the new leadership of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Curran said Kennedy’s employee dismissals have culled the next generation of scientists at the CDC.
Curran also expressed doubt in the reliability of the CDC’s pending COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.
So did board member Dr. Lucky Jain, chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the Emory University School of Medicine. He said faculty with young children have been emailing him with concerns about how to ensure vaccine access. He said they fear Georgia will follow the lead of Florida, which is moving to end all vaccine requirements for school children.
Florida’s plan drew criticism from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“The ripple effect of removing vaccine entry requirements would affect all of us, not just those with children in school,” the Florida chapter president, Dr. Rana Alissa, said after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his surgeon general, Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, announced the new policy.
Jain asked what Georgia was doing “to avoid a situation like what has happened in Florida.”
He wanted reassurance that vaccine access “isn’t diminished over time in Georgia” and said, perhaps jokingly — his comment drew laughter — “is there something that the board can independently do to petition the governor?”
Toomey responded that she spoke with Gov. Brian Kemp’s office about immunization earlier Tuesday.
“I think that there is a huge commitment and understanding of the importance of immunizations, particularly for children — for children’s health,” Toomey said. “And we intend to continue to carry that message.”
Jain also asked for clarity on a statement issued by Toomey’s agency last week indicating Georgia was awaiting guidance from the CDC and its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Kennedy alarmed many observers by stripping the advisory panel of its members and gradually replacing them with his own picks.
Toomey clarified that she approved her agency’s message merely because she was waiting to make vaccine recommendations until seeing the federal guidance, which will affect insurance coverage and liability. She also said the state buys vaccine through a federal program, and it has not yet been shipped.
Georgia is not just saying “well, whatever,” she said. “We want to take action when there’s something we need to be addressing, and right now we’re waiting on that final approval because there are other factors within that that we have to consider.”
by Ty Tagami | Sep 9, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia has a new U.S. attorney, after the federal judges for the Northern District of Georgia appointed Theodore S. Hertzberg to lead the district office Monday.
Hertzberg had been serving as an interim lead after U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi appointed him to that role in May. He succeeded Richard Moultrie Jr., who took the job on an acting basis after then-U.S. Attorney Ryan Buchanan resigned in January at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.
Hertzberg previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney for nearly 10 years, working for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia in Savannah, then moving to Atlanta in 2018.
He has prosecuted gang leaders, child sex predators, gun traffickers and armed felons, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Before becoming a federal prosecutor, Hertzberg practiced law in the New York office of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP and served as a law clerk to Judge Kristi K. DuBose of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. He graduated from Amherst College and the New York University School of Law.
