New Georgia law targeting Obamacare prohibits Extension Service navigators who help enrollment

It's no secret that some states do not like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Recently Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed two bills that not only thwart the law but make it more difficult for the Peach State to expand Medicaid anytime soon. House Bill 990 transfers Medicaid expansion authority from the governor's office to lawmakers, while HB 943 "restricts state and local agencies and their employees from advocating for Medicaid expansion" and "bans the creation of a state health insurance exchange," writes Andrea Flynn of the liberal Roosevelt Institute.

The second bill, HB 943, will also prevent the College of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Georgia from continuing its navigator program to help Georgians get Obamacare coverage once the federal grant of $1.7 million runs out in August, Andy Miller writes for Georgia Health News.

Although Georgia did not expand Medicaid eligibility to people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, poor people who qualified for it and PeachCare, a state program, could still sign up. "Georgia cannot afford for our Medicaid rolls to swell. Otherwise, we start cutting into the education budget, the transportation budget and the public safety budget," Rep. Jason Spencer, sponsor of HB 943, told Georgia Health News.

The navigator program sought to educate people about the law, to help them sign up for Medicaid or for coverage on the national exchange. "People who had never had insurance and hadn't had insurance in a long time got affordable, high-quality insurance," Deborah Murray, the college's associate dean for Extension and outreach, told The Rural Blog. "People were so appreciative and relieved to know they could now afford health care."

Only a few other states have navigator programs based in universities, such as Arkansas and Florida. Murray said she knew the law wasn't popular in Georgia, but she still didn't expect the kind of political opposition that arose in the legislature. "The role of the university is to educate," Murray said. "What we were doing is really education focused: giving people the information they needed to make informed decisions."

After the grant runs out, Murray said the university's Cooperative Extension Service and its county offices will continue its mission to educate and inform. "Educating the public about health-insurance literacy is part of the Extension and land-grant mission of the university, and we will continue to do that," Murray said. "Helping people understand health insurance and use it properly will help reduce health care costs."