Georgia hurries to amp up Medicaid hospital funding by $2 billion

Analysts have predicted that, as passed by the House of Representatives, the federal budget would cost Georgia’s rural hospitals $540 million. The bill’s writers have formally named it after Trump’s term, the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.”

Trump says the cuts are to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse.” Policy experts say it reduces funding for care and would put about 10 million otherwise eligible Americans off government-subsidized health insurance.

The hospital funding stream is just one of the many types of Medicaid funding in the crosshairs. Hundreds of thousands of Georgians are still expected to lose their health insurance as a result of new red tape inserted into the bill.

But the hospital funding cut is significant, and hospital groups are powerful lobbyists.

Talks about the legislation in Washington are ongoing, and President Donald Trump has demanded a bill be on his desk to sign by July 4.

“This is very important,” Board Chairman Roger Folsom said in apologizing to fellow board members for delaying the start of their weekend.

“We’re doing our best to be responsive to the Medicaid conversations in Washington,” echoed DCH Commissioner Russel Carlson.

The measures passed Friday would add private children’s hospitals to the funding program, a move the state estimates would draw down an additional $348 million a year in federal funding.

It would also significantly increase payments for hospitals that achieve certain goals, like training Georgia doctors and delivering babies, an increase that could bring in an additional $2.1 billion a year.

Medicaid is a significant funding source both for endangered rural hospitals and wealthy facilities like Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which would be one of the beneficiaries of the bill. It would also face the cuts in a big way, since all of the facility’s patients are children and almost all low-income Georgia children are eligible for Medicaid.

In addition, Wellstar Health System has taken over training doctors at Augusta University Medical Center, now called Wellstar MCG, so it would benefit by meeting the new Georgia program’s goal of training doctors.

Gov. Brian Kemp’s office touted the goal-based Medicaid funding proposal.

“This administration remains committed to promoting access to medical care for all Georgians, no matter their zip code, through innovative solutions that address the unique needs and challenges of our state,” Kemp spokesman Garrison Douglas said. “Today’s vote reinforces that fact.”

Adding a monetary reward for meeting goals has been developed in talks with hospitals for many months, and it made sense to get it done immediately, state officials said.

The Georgia Hospital Association said the state’s proposals will benefit communities statewide.

“These new proposals would create significant new additional funding for hospitals in Georgia while also addressing many of the state’s health care policy priorities” by conditioning funding on results, GHA said in a written statement.

They “would improve access to quality care, including critical services such as rural OB access, expand graduate medical education opportunities, and support additional behavioral health services across our state.”

The board’s three votes were unanimous. The department’s staff will now negotiate the details with the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, headed by Dr. Mehmet Oz, and work to get final signoff from Oz and Kemp.

But getting the programs authorized now is no guarantee they’ll survive. Different versions of the federal budget have varying start dates. If the final version makes the start date retroactive to May 1, the measures approved Friday would be too late to be grandfathered in.