Comment on Georgia publicly touts its Medicaid experiment as a success. Numbers tell a different story. by Georgia’s Medicaid work requirement blocks its most vulnerable from coverage

Brian Kemp speaks about the state’s Pathways to Coverage program at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta, Georgia, on Jan. 15, 2025. Credit: Rahul Bali/WABE The state told the federal government in its application to experiment with Pathways that it hoped to enroll 25,000 of the 246,000 Georgians eligible for Pathways during the program’s first year. In August 2023, a month after Pathways launched, the state was only able to verify that 39 of the 152 enrollees were indeed working or otherwise engaged in activities deemed acceptable by the state, according to state reports to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.