Piedmont Healthcare has added Augusta to its expanding hospital footprint. The Atlanta-based nonprofit system now contains 19 hospitals, with the announcement Tuesday that it has taken over University Health Care System, which includes University Hospital in Augusta. Other hospitals in the agreement are smaller facilities: University Hospital Summerville and University Hospital McDuffie. The two systems…
One House bill would make Georgia’s Medicaid managed care insurers face stricter requirements on how they spend their government dollars. There’s a second bill that has also captured their attention – an attempt to wrest control of patients’ prescription drugs from those health plans. House Bill 1351 would remove the function of the three managed…
The Georgia House passed legislation Tuesday that could give Medicaid coverage to thousands of uninsured residents who have HIV. The chamber approved House Bill 1192 with a bipartisan 136-14 vote. If enacted by the General Assembly, the legislation would instruct the state’s Department of Community Health to apply to the feds for a waiver that…
By Drew Kann, Shelia Poole and Nick Thieme This article is reprinted courtesy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Lanetra Tucker used to live in an apartment just a block away from Crawford W. Long Middle School. Most days, her children made the short walk to and from the campus in south Atlanta, in the shadow of Hartsfield-Jackson…
By Andy Miller and Rebecca Grapevine The CEO of an insurance industry trade group said Wednesday that insurer members are not opposed to the medical spending requirements for Medicaid managed care plans contained in a mental health parity bill. Among its provisions, the high-profile House Bill 1013 would set up a minimum level of medical…
By Andy Miller and Rebecca Grapevine A House committee Tuesday approved a bill that would require more public disclosure about Georgia health plans serving Medicaid patients and state employees and teachers. House Bill 1276, if it becomes law, would require the main state health agency to post reports showing how many primary care providers these…
By Phil Galewitz and Andy Miller When Republican-led states balked at expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s administration tossed them a carrot — allowing several to charge monthly premiums to newly eligible enrollees. Republicans pushed for the fees to give Medicaid recipients “skin in the game” — the idea they would…
The state Senate unanimously approved a bill Monday extending Medicaid coverage from six months to a year for low-income post-partum women. The legislation aims to address Georgia’s high rate of maternal mortality — women’s deaths related to pregnancy. Medicaid, the federal/state program for low-income and disabled residents, covers more than half of the births in…
By Brian Eason, AJC Editor’s note: This article is reprinted with permission of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. WebMD and Georgia Health News broke the story in July 2019 of the potential dangers of cancer-causing ethylene oxide in three census tracts in metro Atlanta. Years before the neighbors of a medical sterilization plant near Smyrna knew that the…
Expanding Medicaid would give coverage to thousands of uninsured HIV patients in Georgia and provide millions of dollars of additional services for people infected with the virus, a recently released study says. The expansion of Medicaid, as outlined in the Affordable Care Act, has been adopted in 38 states, but not in Georgia. Republican elected…