By skyforbes 
Problem:
Enrollment in medical insurance plans provides coverage to individuals in part to relieve the astronomical costs associated with medical procedures, enabling feasibility of medical care especially during emergency situations as well as preventative circumstances to minimize future severity of illness. Medicaid enrollment provides an avenue for obtaining coverage for populations that already have limited access to resources, thereby lifting the burden of medical costs when conditions arise to necessitate medical procedures. Though enrollment in Medicaid has increased in Georgia over the past few years despite Georgia’s lack of Medicaid expansion under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), the overall state enrollment remains significantly lower than the national Medicaid enrollment rate with 14% uninsured in Georgia compared to 9% uninsured nationally in 2015. This observation compounded with 37% low-income populations affected by medical concerns from obesity to sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Georgia emphasizes the necessity for policies to encourage Medicaid expansion within the state.
Stakeholders:
Primary stakeholders in the ongoing discussion of Medicaid expansion include the overarching federal bodies responsible for funding the program, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the United States Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the Georgia Department of Community Health which administers the Medicaid program throughout Georgia. Other stakeholders include hospitals and public health facilities that accept Medicaid, as Medicaid expansion will hypothetically increase the consumers of medical care. Since the audience of this policy issue is the uninsured low-income population of Georgia, this group is also contained as a stakeholder group for whom the policy measures will affect medical practices.
Feasibility:
Considering the state-specific guidelines by which Medicaid is decided to be expanded, and the historical difficulty with which political gridlock has advocated for Medicaid expansion, this policy problem is among the more difficult to resolve by simple expansion. If steps are to be made towards increasing enrollment in Medicaid in the state of Georgia, changes must be made on a local level in the form of advocacy and awareness directly to the uninsured populations who are negatively impacted by high medical costs. Widespread communication among advocacy groups and coordinated efforts to ease the process by which uninsured populations can obtain information about and enroll in Medicaid may increase the feasibility of resolving this problem.
Footnotes:
(2017, June). Medicaid in Georgia. Kaiser Family Foundation. http://files.kff.org/attachment/fact-sheet-medicaid-state-GA.
Antonisse, L., Garfield, R., Rudowitz, R., et al. (2017, February). The Effects of Medicaid Expansion under the ACA: Updated Findings from a Literature Review. Kaiser Family Foundation. http://www.kff.org/report-section/the-effects-of-medicaid-expansion-under-the-aca-updated-findings-from-a-literature-review-table-1/.