Most Georgia voters favor expanding the eligibility for Medicaid to allow more people to enroll in health insurance plans, a new poll from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found, with 69% giving approval.
Support is predictably strong among Democrats to provide government-funded health care services to hundreds of thousands more people who have low or no incomes, but independents also showed overwhelming support for the idea. More surprising is that nearly half of Republicans — 47% — said the state should expand the program to cover the uninsured poor, continuing a trend of widening support from GOP voters.
“If you need health insurance, you should have it. Everybody should have it,” said Brenda Cina, 77, of Gordon County, who said she’s supporting Donald Trump’s bid for president in November.
The poll was conducted Jan. 3-11 by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs and involved 1,007 registered voters. The margin of error is 3.1 percentage points.
The findings could provide a boost to Republican leaders, who for the first time in a decade are seriously considering an expansion in exchange for easing regulations that govern who can open a new health care business, known as certificate of need, or CON.
“I’m encouraged that we’re looking at the facts that surround expansion,” Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican from Newington, said last week.
The results among right-leaning voters is markedly different from a decade ago when tea party Republicans found Medicaid expansion politically toxic. Suddenly, a once untouchable topic among conservatives — growing a government program — is emerging as a viable conversation.
“Everybody has a need for it. For the less fortunate, it could possibly help them out,” said Christopher Walker, 56, who lives in Spalding County. Walker, who works in construction, said he voted for Trump in 2020 and plans to vote for him again in November because “our country was a lot better off a few years ago than it is now.”
Trump, however, has said that if he’s elected to a second term, he would continue to fight against the Affordable Care Act, which provided for Medicaid expansion.
Harry Heiman, a professor of health policy and behavioral sciences at the Georgia State University School of Public Health, said he suspects “facts and data” about the benefits of expanding Medicaid are changing attitudes.
“And I think that’s what we’re seeing among the electorate,” he said.
Until now, efforts to boost Medicaid in Georgia have stalled, despite billions of federal dollars offered to subsidize the program. The state remains one of only 10 in the nation that has not grown its Medicaid option under the Affordable Care Act. Opponents cite the potential cost down the road, saying that Georgia would be on the hook to pay the full cost of new enrollees if federal funding disappeared. Advocates say the federal match to cover additional beneficiaries would increase to 90%, up from about two-thirds.
Gov. Brian Kemp, who has long opposed full expansion of Medicaid, launched his own small-scale effort to bring more people into Medicaid in July. That program, called Georgia Pathways to Coverage, offers Medicaid to working-age adults who work or perform other state-approved activities at least 80 hours per month. But issues with the rollout, including technology challenges and limited publicity, meant that fewer than 2,000 people among the estimated 370,000 eligible Georgians have actually enrolled so far.
The program also does not account for people who can’t or don’t work because of mental illness or who serve their family as an unpaid caregiver, for example.
While Medicaid expansion was notably absent in Kemp’s State of the State address last week, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones has not shut the door on the discussion.
“I have never wavered on my position that expanding access to health care, especially in rural parts of the state, should be a priority for all Georgians,” Jones, who oversees the Senate, told the AJC.
One approach lawmakers are considering is a method tested in Arkansas, where the state used expansion dollars to buy private insurance for uninsured residents.
“Expanding access to care for low-income working families through a private option — in a fiscally responsible way that lowers premiums — is something we will continue to gather facts on,” Burns said.
However, Alexander Amos, a 25-year-old student and food delivery worker who is on Medicaid, had misgivings about a plan that would rely on private insurers.
“It’s a bad idea for us to use a middleman because that’s where you get the waste and that’s where you get the skimming off the top,” he said.
The results track with years of AJC polling. Georgians have supported Medicaid expansion since at least 2013 by margins that have generally increased over time. A 2014 study found that 57% of Georgians favored Medicaid expansion. That rate jumped to 75% in 2017 and remained high at 65% in 2020.
AJC’s poll results are not that different from internal polling done by an organization that is working to pass Medicaid expansion. Georgia First said 76% of likely Georgia voters overall supported expanding Medicaid, including 60% of Republican likely voters after the respondent was given an explanation.
“I never really understood why our state didn’t expand Medicaid with the Affordable Care Act,” said Chris Ledford, 34, who lives in DeKalb County. “I thought it was just kind of shooting ourselves in the foot. I’m glad to see, from what I read, that they’re considering expanding it.”
Staff writer Ariel Hart contributed to this story.
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