With progress on the health care bill speeding up, the question as to how much it will take from our budget is uncertain.
As is, the bill will be active in 2013. Opposing estimates take the cost to the Georgia budget from below $200 million dollars a year to as much as $500 million by 2019. The central issue in the debate is Medicaid, which could see huge increases in enrollment with the new bill.
The State has estimated that Medicaid participation could go up as much as 77 percent, due to soon-to-be relaxed parameters for the program.
The official estimate from Georgia's government on the cost of new health care is $100 million to $200 million annually. By 2019, the price tag is expected to reach $500 million a year. Sonny Perdue believes that the state cannot sustain the burden of health costs in addition to the hard economic times.
A senior health care analyst for the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, Timothy Sweeney, dismisses the money fears. An advocate of the new health care bill, he points out that the budget for the state is around $17 billion a year, making the cost of health care a mere fraction of this budget.
Health care opponents stress that the small percentage is still too much of a burden for Georgians to have to consider. Advocates, however, have pointed out that revisions to the bill were made after Georgia officially released its numbers. Another estimate made by the non-profit Federal Funds Information for States came out much lower: a steady $145 million a year, all the way up to 2019.
Perdue stands firm that the estimate is "still in the ballpark."
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