by Cindy Zeldin, Executive Director, Georgians for a Healthy Future

It’s often assumed that if you have a job, you have health insurance. That’s not the case for many working families in Georgia, though, because our state leaders haven’t accepted the federal funding set aside for us to extend cost-effective Medicaid coverage to more uninsured adults.

A significant health coverage gap exists for parents whose earnings exceed Georgia’s eligibility threshold for Medicaid but don’t earn enough to receive tax credits in new health insurance exchanges. These working families’ incomes are too high to qualify for Medicaid and too low to qualify for assistance through the healthcare.gov marketplace.

These uninsured parents often work jobs that don’t offer health insurance, like retail or restaurant industry jobs. These workers are members of our communities that we interact with on a daily basis, and it should be easy for Georgia to help these friends and neighbors afford health insurance by accepting more federal Medicaid funding to close its health coverage gap. After all, other states have negotiated homegrown plans to close the coverage gap. These plans contributed to the steep drop in the uninsured rate across the country. Unfortunately for Georgia, we lag behind.

We’ve found that nearly three-in-ten of those expected to benefit from Medicaid expansion in Georgia are parents with children in the home. It’s important to cover these individuals because when they have health coverage, their health status improves along with the well-being of their children. It would be fair to think of this as a long-term investment in the state: When parents don’t have to worry about their own health, they can become more financially secure and devote more time to making sure their children are getting the care they need to succeed and contribute.

Quite simply, Medicaid expansion in Georgia would mean better health for working parents in the short-term and more successful children in Georgia in the long-term.