Rural healthcare has been a political talking point in Georgia for years, and for good reason. Over the past five years seven rural hospitals have shut down, leaving many in the far reaches of the state hours from the nearest healthcare provider.
Both Governor Nathan Deal and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle made the issue a priority during their time in office, (as has House Speaker David Ralston) helping push through a series of bills that created a Rural Hospital annual tax credit, which in 2018 raised some $60 million for the state’s 58 poorest and most rural hospitals. That number was a huge success and step forward for the program, which in 2017 raised just $9.2 million.
The men elected to replace them, Secretary of State Brian Kemp and former state Rep. Geoff Duncan, respectively, have both made rural healthcare a key part of their own platforms in their successful campaigns this year, which bodes well for the program’s future even under new leadership.
In 2016 Duncan sponsored HB 919, the original bill that sought to create a tax credit that would go towards rural hospitals. Now preparing to take the reins as the head man in the state Senate, he will surely help push for more legislation to aid rural hospitals, including possibly another raise of the cap to a full $100 million.
Other possible legislation could touch on the process by which money is divvied up among the participating hospitals. Currently donors to the program are allowed to specify which hospital they want their money to go towards, up to the individual cap of $4 million. Donors who do not specify a recipient see their money go to Georgia HEART, an Atlanta-based consulting group which determines how best to dole out the donations, after of course taking out their 3% fee.
In 2018 the amount not designated to a particular hospital came out to $19 million, some one third of the total set aside. Georgia HEART uses a state Department of Community Health list to hand out money in increments, averaging out to roughly $340,000 from the undesignated donations. State Rep. Terry England (R-Auburn), chairman of both the House Appropriations Committee as well as the House Rural Development Council, has said he’d prefer donors to specify which hospitals they’d like to send their money to, cutting out the middle man.
“The full intent has always been that you, as an individual, decide and tell someone where that money is supposed to go,” he told reporters recently. “And not leave it to someone else — who is actually profiting from the transaction — to be able to decide ‘OK, I’m going to send it here or I’m going to send it there.’ You should be the one deciding that.”
People say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. In this case that’s a good thing – expect Georgia’s new leadership to keep rural healthcare atop the agenda in 2019.
