HEALTH CARE
Refusal on Medicaid
is costing Georgians
As of Jan. 1, Georgia taxpayers are helping to pay the costs of Medicaid expansion in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.
Because Gov. Deal has chosen not to have Georgia participate in the expansion, we will be paying for that care in other states, and Georgia will receive none of the Medicaid expansion money. Nearly 700,000 Georgians would be eligible for the expanded Medicaid coverage. Those people will continue to get sick and to incur medical expenses, and the rest of us Georgians will continue to pay the cost of the care they cannot afford – costs which would be largely covered by acceptance of Medicaid expansion.
ROBERT R. NESBIT JR., M.D., Augusta
Premiums, deductibles
take leap under ACA
Regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), your paper continues to have articles like Thursday’s (“Debate aside, coverage gets under way,” News, Jan. 2) about “getting coverage for the first time,” and discuss a “bare bones policy with a $6,000 deductible” before. However, there is never mention of the number of people who lost current coverage (significantly more than those who signed up), or the very high deductibles of the lowest, bronze plan — over $10,000 for a family!
Can the people buying the bronze plan afford this? Most people I know who were affected by ACA lost their current coverage and, on their new coverage, found their premiums and deductibles significantly raised.
LARRY LAIBSON, Roswell
DEKALB CITIES
Rush to incorporate
reveals plans’ flaws
The Lakeside city advocates are pushing forward with a rapidity that exposes the many flaws in all three efforts — the Tucker, Briarcliff and Lakeside city proposals for DeKalb County. The motivations are thinly hidden efforts to relieve these areas of their responsibilities to the citizens of all of DeKalb.
This is especially the case with the Lakeside proposal, which through clever gerrymandering incorporates the most well-off sections of the area, hives off the less well-off areas, and incorporates the Northlake Mall area to provide revenue and, in turn, strip the other proposals from their chief source of tax revenue.
This whole effort is simply a rush to judgment. Time needs to be taken to explore how a coalition of the three proposals for cityhood might function as a viable and responsible entity in DeKalb County.
DAVID V. MCQUEEN, Tucker
