New Report Release: “Closing the Coverage Gap”
At Georgia Health Initiative, we believe all Georgians deserve affordable, high quality health coverage. Health coverage is foundational: it facilitates access to health care services, provides financial protection against large medical costs, and supports better health outcomes.
More than 1.2 million Georgians, however, lack health coverage, and our state has the third-highest uninsured rate in the entire nation.
A big driver of our state’s high uninsured rate is that Georgia hasn’t yet expanded Medicaid, creating a coverage gap where people with incomes above the Medicaid eligibility limit but too low to qualify for subsidies on the Marketplace have no viable options for health coverage.
As we deepen and expand our work in the policy space, we are committed to sparking dialogue about how to close the coverage gap in a way that prioritizes ease and quality of access for our fellow Georgians in a thoughtful and responsible manner. Our new report, “Closing the Coverage Gap: Policy Considerations for Public-Private Solutions to Expand Health Insurance in Georgia,” describes state coverage approaches and federal financing around Medicaid expansion, presents information on the uninsured population and health coverage in Georgia, explains the Arkansas “private option” approach and describes Arkansas’s experience with this model, presents questions and considerations for Georgia associated with this type of model, and discusses key issues for policymakers.