Georgia
Can a Medicaid plan that requires work succeed? First year of Georgia experiment is not promising
ATLANTA (AP) — By now, Georgia officials expected their new Medicaid plan, the only one in the nation with a work requirement, to provide health insurance to 25,000 low-income residents and possibly tens of thousands more.
But a year since its launch, Pathways to Coverage has roughly 4,300 members, much lower than what state officials projected and a tiny fraction of the roughly half-million state residents who could be covered if Georgia, like 40 other states, agreed to a full Medicaid expansion.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s office has presented Pathways as a compromise that would add people to Medicaid while also helping them transition off it. Blaming the Biden administration for delaying the program’s start, Kemp’s office says it’s redoubling efforts to sign people up.
Health and public policy experts believe the enrollment numbers, dismal even compared to what Kemp’s office had said Pathways could achieve, reflect a fundamental flaw: The work requirement is just too burdensome.
“It’s clear that the Georgia Pathways experiment is a huge failure,” said Leo Cuello, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy.
Pathways requires all recipients to show at least 80 hours of work monthly, volunteer activity, schooling or vocational rehabilitation. It also limits coverage to able-bodied adults earning no more than the federal poverty line, which is $15,060 for a single person and $31,200 for a family of four.
Cuello noted the program makes no exceptions for people who are caring for children or other family, lack transportation, suffer from drug addiction or face a myriad other barriers to employment. Then there are people with informal jobs that make documenting their hours impossible.
In rural Clay County in southwest Georgia, Dr. Karen Kinsell said many of her patients are too sick to work. Over the last year, Kinsell has suggested Pathways to about 30 patients who might meets its requirements, but none have signed up.
“I think the general idea is it would be too much work and too complicated for little benefit,” she said.
Just going online each month to submit proof of work can be a significant obstacle, said Harry Heiman, a health policy professor at Georgia State University.
“For low-income people who are worried about staying housed and putting food on the table, one more thing to do is often one thing too many,” he said.
The program’s poor showing so far may have implications beyond Georgia. Republicans in other states in recent months also have proposed requiring work to get Medicaid. In Mississippi, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann in February cited Georgia’s Pathways program as a model.
A second term for former President Donald Trump would significantly boost the prospects for such programs. The Trump administration approved Medicaid work requirement plans in 13 states, only to have the Biden administration revoke those waivers in 2021. Pathways survived after a court fight.
Georgia launched the program on July 1, 2023 with little fanfare, and public health experts say they have seen scant effort to promote it or sign people up.
The launch coincided with a federally mandated review of the eligibility of all 2.7 million Medicaid recipients in the state following the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, another challenging task for Georgia officials.
Still, they did not scale-back their enrollment expectations. Days before the launch, then-Georgia Department of Community Health Commissioner Caylee Noggle told The Associated Press that Pathways could cover up to 100,000 people in year one. The 25,000 estimate had been in the state’s 2019 application for Pathways.
Garrison Douglas, a spokesman for Kemp, said in a statement that Pathways had received “extraordinary interest from thousands of low income, able-bodied Georgians,” and the state was “still fighting to reclaim the time stolen” from it by the Biden administration.
The program was supposed to launch in 2021, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services objected to the work requirement that February and later revoked it. Georgia sued and a federal judge reinstated the work mandate in 2022.
As of June 7, 2024, Pathways had 4,318 members, according to the Georgia Department of Community Health. The agency said in an email that promotion efforts have included social media content and streaming ads on TV and radio, while a “robust” outreach campaign was being planned.
“Pathways deserves more time to see if it reaches its potential,” said Chris Denson, director of policy and research at the conservative Georgia Public Policy Foundation.
Denson said there is general agreement even among Pathways’ supporters that the state could have done a better marketing job. But he said a fundamental tenet of Pathways — transitioning people through employment, job training or other qualifying activities to private insurance — is sound, particularly given that many primary care physicians in the state are not accepting new Medicaid patients.
To critics, the actual first-year figure is all the more galling given how many people full Medicaid expansion could cover at no extra cost to the state, at least initially.
An analysis by the left-leaning Georgia Budget and Policy Institute found Georgia’s Medicaid program would receive so much more federal funding under full expansion that in its first year the program could cover 482,000 residents for the same cost as 100,000 Pathways’ recipients.
North Carolina, which fully expand Medicaid in December, has enrolled nearly 500,000 people in about half the time Pathways has been in effect.
That broader Medicaid expansion was a key part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in 2010. In exchange for offering Medicaid to nearly all adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level, states would get more federal funding for the new enrollees.
The higher eligibility limit is $20,783 annually for a single person and $43,056 for a family of four. None of the 40 states that have accepted the deal require recipients to work in order to qualify.
But Kemp, like many other Republican governors, rejected full expansion, arguing that the state’s long-term costs would end up being too high.
Republicans in the Georgia Legislature floated the possibility of full expansion in 2024 before abandoning the effort.
For now, Georgia officials show no sign of giving up on Pathways. The program is set to expire at the end of September 2025. But in February, the state sued the Biden administration to try to extend it to 2028. A federal judge heard arguments last month.
Kirby Smart hasn’t hid from how Georgia goes about doling out dollars to its roster.
He wants veterans to make more than newcomers.
“I don’t want you to have to take a discount,” Smart recently told Josh Pate. “OK, a discount might be a little less than year one or two. We have we have traditionally paid our players junior and senior year as much as anybody at those positions. We don’t want to start [earlier] because I want you to earn it and work your way up.”
Smart acknowledges that route might hurt Georgia in recruiting. The 2026 recruiting cycle seems to reflect that. It was the first time Georgia signed a recruiting class that finished outside the top five of the 247Sports Composite rankings since Smart’s first class back in 2016. The Bulldogs had just two players finish in the top 50 of the player rankings, the fewest ever for a Smart signing haul.
Coming out of spring practice, it seems like the Bulldogs did a good job of identifying players who could fit and play immediately. Craig Dandridge, Tyriq Green, Khamari Brooks and Zykie Helton all had strong springs. None were viewed as top 50 overall prospects.
As for the top players on Georgia’s 2026 roster, most of them are in either their third or fourth seasons. KJ Bolden, Ellis Robinson, Nate Frazier and Chris Cole all signed as members of the 2024 recruiting class. Gunner Stockton is in his fifth year at Georgia and second as a starter.
Georgia’s 2026 team will be an older team compared to the one the Bulldogs had last season. Consider that Georgia started the year with only 10 members of the 2022 class on the roster and 13 players from the 2023 recruiting class.
This year, that number is up to 29 when you combine the number of players from the 2023 and 2024 recruiting classes on the Georgia roster. Georgia’s 2026 team will have 34 players with at least three years of experience in Athens. Last season, that number was just 25.
Part of the reason Georgia’s roster is a better reflection of its spending in 2026 is because it did a much better job of retaining talent with its 2024 class than it did with the 2023 group.
Going into last season, 13 of the 26 members of the 2023 recruiting class were no longer a part of the roster.
With the 2024 group, Georgia still has 23 of the 29 players it signed from the 2024 high school recruiting ranks. Georgia also has transfers London Humphreys and Xzavier McLeod entering their third seasons in Athens.
The gap between the two classes is particularly stark at the top. Georgia has not had just one of the 10 top 100 players it signed in the 2024 class depart the program before their third season in Athens. With the 2023 group, six of the 12 top-100 signees had already left Athens.
For as much fretting as there might about the state of Georgia’s current recruiting, the 2024 class was ranked first in the country. That collection of players, which Georgia has been able to keep together, is set to enter their season in Athens.
Georgia paid big to keep players like Bolden, Robinson and Frazier from entering the transfer portal. There was a kernel of truth when Smart ribbed Miami coach Mario Cristobal about sitting too close to Robinson at an award ceremony.
Robinson figures to be one of the best players in the country this coming season. We’ve often seen top recruits — CJ Allen and Monroe Freeling are examples from the 2023 class — have their best seasons in year three, before heading off to the NFL.
That is why it’s so important to keep recruiting classes together and retain talent on an annual basis. Georgia has done a better job with the 2024 class compared to the 2023 class to this point. That’s a big reason why there aren’t as many questions and concerns about Georgia this offseason compared to last offseason, even if it has made Georgia a bit boring to talk about from a national perspective.
Texas, Miami and LSU all spent big money to bring in new talent. With Georgia, it paid top dollar to keep its roster together. No SEC team had fewer players transfer out than Georgia’s 12. That offsets some concern about the Bulldogs also making the fewest additions in the transfer portal.
“We had some new guys on our roster,” Smart told Pate. “We had 26 new freshmen. We had eight new portals. So like with all that going on, we had new people. But at least we knew they were ours. And going through spring practice to me was much more enjoyable because you didn’t have this big dark cloud brewing of was he going to be here?”
Georgia still built a very successful team in 2025, as the Bulldogs won the SEC and made it back to the College Football Playoff. But Georgia has bigger goals and Smart knows it.
“Apparently, all we can do is win the SEC championship right now, so that’s not good enough,” Smart told Finebaum.
The Bulldogs are hoping that a more veteran team will set them up for even more success than they had a season ago. And that veteran element was acquired by keeping its one-time recruits in Athens for seasons three and four.
Georgia
A council meeting is called in a small Georgia town whose mayor fired the entire police department
COHUTTA, Ga. (AP) — The town council in a small north Georgia mountain community called a special meeting Friday evening to discuss reinstating the police department after the mayor fired the chief and all the officers.
The notice for the meeting, posted outside the Cohutta Town Hall, says the council will also consider a request for the mayor’s “immediate resignation.”
Another sign posted earlier this week in the town of about 930 people announced that the police department had been dissolved “per Mayor Ron Shinnick.” It told people who need help to call a non-emergency county number.
The jobs of the chief and about 10 officers were terminated as of Wednesday morning. Exact reasons haven’t been shared publicly, and townspeople are hoping to get some answers at Friday’s meeting.
Shinnick said he took action because of some comments officers posted on social media. The now-former Sgt. Jeremy May said it involved a complaint that he and other officers had raised about the mayor’s wife Pam Shinnick, who had served as the town clerk.
“This all comes to personal vendetta from the mayor, and I wholeheartedly believe that,” May told WRCB-TV. “We took a stand for transparency, and in result, every one of them has lost their jobs.”
The now-former Cohutta Police Chief Greg Fowler told WRCB that he couldn’t comment in detail as the officers were clearing out the police department and removing equipment from the building this week. The mayor told the station he’s not sure what will happen next.
Phone calls and emails left Friday by The Associated Press for Shinnick and the town’s attorney were not immediately returned.
With no police officers working, the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office said in a brief statement that deputies will help the townspeople if they need it. Cohutta, just south of the Tennessee line, is about 100 miles (161 kilometers) northwest of Atlanta.
Former GOP Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan has the best shot at defeating the GOP in November’s general election.
Democratic candidate for governor Geoff Duncan walks in to file paperwork to run for election at the Capitol in Atlanta on Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/AJC)
By Michèle Taylor – For The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
42 minutes ago
I was fresh out of college when I worked on my first presidential campaign for the Democratic candidate in 1988.
Over the years, I have worked on campaigns across Georgia and the nation. I have served as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee’s national finance committee and as our country’s United Nations human rights ambassador under President Joe Biden.
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Ambassador Michèle Taylor is a lifelong Democrat who served in the Biden administration. She is a professor of the practice at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech. (Courtesy)
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Biden and Obama both evolved in their political positions
Duncan showed he is willing to fight against Trump
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