Q&A
What is the purpose of your group?
Parents of children with and without special needs and their concerned providers are organizing this diverse group to promote health care for kids as a top priority for Georgia.
The state of Georgia has made drastic cuts to its healthcare programs – particularly those that serve the most needy – the poor and disabled. The state proclaims a large budget surplus while it’s poor and disabled are losing access to vital healthcare. Our goal is to help the state recognize how important healthcare is for this very special population.
What makes your group unique?
There are many groups who advocate for different health issues. We are parents, not paid advocates. Our children have been covered by Medicaid or PeachCare. Many of us have been terminated from these programs or have seen services to our children drastically cut.
Our group is focused primarily on making sure the state address’ our concerns with real solutions. We are trying to provide a voice for those who don’t have one. We are trying to educate our elected officials on what changes the state has implemented and the long term cost to the state if these programs are not restored.
Everyone has issues with the rising costs of health care. What’s different about the issues you wish to highlight?
We agree that health care costs are rising for everyone. Some of our children are covered by primary private insurance which doesn’t fully cover the developmental therapy services that our children need.
However, most of our children rely solely on state government health insurance such as Medicaid and PeachCare. We pay for these services with our tax dollars.
And because we have gotten to know the system, we are helping to inform voters that state government could be better stewards of our tax dollars.
Why now? What are the current problems?
Thousands of children have had their health coverage eliminated. Eligibility for PeachCare and Medicaid has been dramatically reduced. Officially, the state will say that they were trying to comply with Federal guidelines.
The reality is that the state has gone beyond the guidelines simply to reduce coverage for those who truly need it. Yes, the state now has a budget surplus, but the children are suffering. Parents who seek healthcare coverage for their children are bombarded with paperwork. Pediatricians and other health providers caring for our children also are overly burdened with duplicate forms that serve no discernible purpose. We are on the verge of a healthcare crisis and we are trying to work with the state to stop these problems before it is too late.
On of the biggest problems for the children with disabilities is that the state has drastically reduced the amount of therapies it is willing to pay for and has made the whole process so cumbersome that many providers are no longer willing to accept Medicaid. The state has implemented such a difficult and restrictive system that doctors and therapists are no longer willing to accept Medicaid as payment. Therefore, even when the state does grant therapy, it is becoming more and more difficult to find a provider to perform it.
What should the state do?
Georgia has been in a very reactive mode to its healthcare programs for sometime. Rather than looking for ways to improve the system, they simply look for ways to reduce costs. They implement programs that place an increasing burden on the parents and providers rather than looking to improve the systems in place. We have worked with the state to provide suggestions that would improve service while still reducing costs, but those suggestions continue to be overlooked.
The state needs to step back and evaluate its healthcare programs from the ground up. It needs to look for ways to make its processes more efficient so that it can offer the same level of services with less money. The state needs to look at these expenditures as an investment rather than simply a liability. By delaying, minimizing or terminating services now, the state is going to see a larger liability in the future.
What does your group hope to have happen?
Georgia’s tax dollars are being wasted on these multiple layers of bureaucracy whose roles are indistinguishable. The number and names of redundant bureaucracies represent an alphabet soup of confusion; and cynically, a purposeful obstruction to providing services for children in need of health coverage.
What is your overall message to our elected officials?
There are over 1.1 million children in Georgia who rely on state government to be efficient and effective in providing health coverage. This is NOT happening now.
Small businesses like doctor’s offices and therapy service providers are being harassed with needless paperwork by government and insurance company bureaucrats.
We are telling our friends and family members that state government is wasting our tax dollars and putting up road blocks of bureaucracy that get in the way of children getting the health services they need.
We’re encouraging them to ask questions of those seeking office what they are going to do to solve the problem.
Isn’t this a federal government problem?
Medicaid and PeachCare are state government programs that receive federal government support. While the federal government has reduced support to state Medicaid programs, the Governor has direct responsibility for the efficient and effective management of Medicaid and PeachCare.
