North Fulton Today

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock urged state officials to expand Medicaid for improved health care so Georgians can get to work.

In a Senate Aging Committe hearing, Ai-Jen Poo, executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, testified that Medicaid expansion will improve economic mobility because it's easier to go to work when a person has access to health care.

"Providing care would actually enable people to work, which is an interesting observation, where we have both putting the work requirements and the basis for getting the care and you're saying, getting the care actually enables people to work," Warnock said in response to her at the hearing.

Closing the Medicaid coverage gap would help diverse groups and narrow racial disparities, Portside reported. It said the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report on Closing the Medicaid Coverage Gap showed the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that people of color are disproportionately likely to lack access to health care. They face higher risks for COVID infection, hospitalization, and death.

Expanded Medicaid isn't just an issue driven by racial factors, however. Portside reported that 2.2 million uninsured citizens have incomes that are below the poverty line but they made too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford private health insurance, if not offered by their employer. These include parents, children, essential workers and various races. 

"This week’s @SenateAging hearing reaffirmed just how important Medicaid expansion is to our older Georgians, as well as home health care workers. I’m urging Georgia state leaders to take the necessary steps to implement this commonsense measure," Warnock said in a Tweet.