Kemp updates area officials on health care efforts

Jul. 9--Gov. Brian Kemp said he and his staff are considering "anything and everything" to develop a successful workaround to the Affordable Care Act during a visit with Augusta-area health care leaders Monday.

Kemp signed legislation earlier this year -- the Patients First Act -- allowing the state to pursue two types of waiver plans to the federal government's Affordable Care Act. One allows the state to modify federal Medicaid rules; the other lets it modify rules related to the federal health care marketplace.

Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have sought Medicaid expansion to get more care and coverage for low-income people under the federal act known as Obamacare. Georgia is one of 14 that have not initiated blanket expansions of Medicaid, the federal health program that is primarily administered by states.

"I think what our plan is is to poach from any state that is being successful in lowering costs and making the access more accessible," he said following a roundtable discussion on health care at Christ Community Health's Olde Town clinic. "The ability we have here is to come up with a Georgia-based solution, and I'm not worried about what they're doing in Texas or what they're doing in another state. We've got to focus on what will work in Georgia."

Georgia's amended 2019 budget provides for $1.6 million -- along with $1 million in federal matching funds -- to hire consultants to develop low-cost policy recommendations that increase health care access and quality for low-income residents and the uninsured.

Kemp's chief health care policy adviser, Ryan Loke, told the room of more than two-dozen local elected officials and area health providers that the study's first phase will be completed this week. Draft versions of a policy could be ready for public review in October.

"The total project timeline is to have submitted both waivers by the end of this calendar year -- which is incredibly aggressive -- but with the governor's commitment and a whole bunch of people on our team not sleeping, we're going to be able to get it done," Loke said.

To which Kemp quipped: "You can sleep later."

Earlier in the day, Kemp toured facilities at Augusta University's Medical College of Georgia, which this year will implement its "3+3+6" initiative, which aims to shorten medical school and offer tuition forgiveness to students who choose to be primary care physicians in underserved areas.

MCG Dean David Hess noted that 75 of Georgia's 159 counties do not have surgeons or OB/GYN physicians. Georgia ranked 40th in the nation in the latest Commonwealth Fund health care study, but Hess suggests it would be much lower if not for the large number of physicians in metro Atlanta and Augusta.

"There's a physician desert out there," Hess said. "At least you have groups of physicians here, but if you go out to rural Georgia, they're often all alone and they feel isolated."

Hess said Georgia remains a "net exporter" of physicians because it lacks sufficient residency slots, as most physicians tend to remain in areas where they receive their post-graduate training.

University Health Care System CEO Jim Davis said more nonprofit primary care providers such as Christ Community -- which his organization funds -- could help alleviate financial strain on health systems and rural hospitals, which are being constrained by declining Medicare reimbursements.

Davis said Christ Community could triple its number of patients but "it doesn't have the capacity."

"So that excess capacity winds up in our ER because people don't have anywhere to go," he said.

Dr. Robert Campbell, Christ Community's co-founder and medical director, urged Kemp to come up with a waiver program that is "fiscally responsible." He said bureaucratic overspending in his home state of Illinois has unduly strained the Medicaid program.

"As an organization, we have been very strict about being fiscally responsible and financially stable, mainly for the protection of our employees and our patients so that we can continue to provide services without a hiccup," Campbell said. "We need to make sure at the state level we're adopting that same sort of fiscal responsibility and not trying to promise too much or leverage our tax base so much that it drives businesses and individuals out of this state like is happening in Illinois."

Kemp said that won't happen in Georgia.

"That is one thing you don't need to worry about," he said. "I assure you."

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