Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams hit out at her opponent, incumbent Governor Brian Kemp, arguing the “callous” and “grotesque” Republican is causing unneeded harm and deaths in the state by refusing to expand Medicaid, a federal health programme for low-income people.
“We’ve lost hospitals and we’ve lost lives,” Ms Abrams told Oprah Winfrey during an event on Thursday.
“What’s so grotesque is we’ve got the money,” Ms Abrams added. “The government has access to the money and won’t accept it because he doesn’t believe that people are entitled to healthcare. I can’t find it in me to be that callous.”
The Democrat said Mr Kemp’s stance has put 19 hospitals at risk of closing and weakened the state’s Covid response.
The Independent has contacted the governor for comment.
Georgia is one of 12 states that hasn’t agreed to accept the expansion of Medicaid, a signature initiative of the “Obamacare” Affordable Care Act.
Governor Kemp has proposed a partial expansion of Medicaid via waivers allowing the state to tweak how the programme is administered, focusing on expanding postpartum care, state funding for rural health centres, and expanding coverage to about 50,000 Georgians.
The Republican has said these proposals represent “a more holistic approach to health care versus a one-size-fits-all government approach.”
Thus far, the Biden administration has rejected these proposals, which would impose work requirements on some recipients and sever the state’s ties with the online federal healthcare exchange Healthcare.gov.
During a debate earlier this week with Mr Kemp, Ms Abrams raised a similar line of critique, accusing the Republican of sending a figurative “Brinks truck” of $3.5bn to other states “because this governor will not accept the money” for Medicaid expansion.
“We need a governor who can do the math but can also do the morality,” she said.
Polls suggest a majority of residents of the Peach state support expanding Medicaid, including most Republicans.
Mr Kemp, however, remains a staunch opponent of the programme, calling it “broken.”
