Raphael Warnock: “We passed the Affordable Care Act here, but Georgia was digging in its heals, and said: No, we are not going to expand…”

“We passed the Affordable Care Act here, but Georgia was digging in its heals, and said: No, we are not going to expand Medicaid. So when I got here, Senator Klobuchar, I made it a priority of mine to get incentives for Georgia to expand Medicaid. And you remember, I went to our caucus and I said: Look, Georgia and about 9--then 10-- other States have not expanded. They should have done it a long time ago. Let's see if we can make it even easier for them. As a freshman Senator, I was able to convince our caucus to give $14.5 billion for nonexpansion States, which includes $2 billion just for Georgia to incentivize Medicaid expansion. Why? So that working people in the gap, people who literally go to work every day, can get healthcare. Georgians left at $2 billion sitting on the table and almost 600,000 Georgians in the gap. The Governor's plan has literally enrolled a whopping 6,500 people in healthcare, but we got nearly 600,000 people in the gap. This is not theoretical stuff. Every time I talk about this, I have to talk about Heather Payne, because Heather Payne is a resident of Dalton, GA. She spent her career taking care of others. She is a traveling nurse. Heather worked throughout COVID as an ER and labor and delivery nurse, yet, often, she did not have healthcare coverage herself because she fell into the healthcare coverage gap. Sometimes she had health insurance coverage; sometimes she didn't.…”