ATLANTA – Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law Tuesday a bill that increases the penalties for business owners who fail to post required notices about resources for human trafficking victims.  

Kemp was joined by his wife, Marty Kemp, who has used her time as first lady to work on stopping human trafficking in Georgia and assisting victims of the crime.  

The new law increases the penalty for business owners who fail to post notices that explain how victims of human trafficking can reach national and state hotlines to get help.  

“This common-sense measure imposes minimum fines for failing to post required notices by public entrances, where they will be easily seen by the public, and in restrooms where victims of trafficking may be able to see the notice while away from their trafficker,” Marty Kemp said at a bill signing ceremony at the Governor’s Mansion.  

“It may not sound like much, but the reality is this simple step could save lives if the notice reaches the right person. This is especially critical in busy areas where traffickers often hide in plain sight.” 

Business owners who fail to post the notices in both English and Spanish can be fined $500 to $1,000 for a first conviction and from $1,000 to $5,000 for a second conviction. The law allows business owners up to 30 days to post the notices after being notified by law enforcement that they are in violation of the law. 

Georgia law requires the notices to be posted in certain types of businesses, including truck stops, bars, adult entertainment businesses, hospitals, airports, rail and bus stations, hotels, and government buildings.  

State Sen. Mike Hodges, R-Brunswick, sponsored the bill and it was carried in the House of Representatives by Rep. Will Wade, R-Dawsonville. Both served as floor leaders for Kemp during the 2023 legislative session and attended the bill signing along with other GOP legislators. 

The measure passed with only one “no” vote in the state Senate and unanimously in the House of Representatives.  

The bill signing ceremony was preceded by a meeting of the GRACE Commission, which is chaired by Marty Kemp. The commission is made up of government and business leaders as well as representatives of non-profit and faith groups that work to end human trafficking and help victims of the crime.  

Attorney General Chris Carr is a member of the commission and has made fighting human trafficking a priority. His office assisted 116 victims, led or assisted 33 investigations, and secured six convictions in 2022, Carr said during the meeting.  

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ATLANTA – With less than two weeks remaining in this year’s General Assembly session, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones has morphed from a lighting-rod political figure to a de facto life coach for anxious lawmakers.

“Everything’s gonna be alright” is the advice Republican Jones is handing out as the legislative session hits the final stretch.  

As lieutenant governor, Jones presides over the state Senate, wielding his heavy gavel from the dais overlooking the chamber where he spent a decade as a senator representing Jackson and central Georgia.   

“I don’t think there’s one piece of legislation out there that the state of the Republic depends on — other than the budget,” the new lieutenant governor said of his approach to the frenetic final days of the session.  

Speaking of the budget, Jones is pleased about across-the-board $2,000 pay raises for state employees as well a property tax rebate drawn from Georgia’s historic budget surplus.  

And he’s applying his equanimous approach to a sports betting measure making its way through the legislature.  

It’s a proposal Jones supports personally but, even if it doesn’t pass, “the following day will still come,” he said.  

Sports betting — after appearing to have died prior to the all-important “Crossover Day” deadline earlier this month– may have gained new life this week when it was tacked onto an unrelated bill about soap box derbies.   

Jones said he thought it was wise for the legislature to consider sports betting apart from other gambling measures.

“History has shown that when you either put sports betting and casinos or sports betting and horse racing together, they usually don’t go anywhere,” he said.

“I had told people in the [Republican] caucus who were interested in sports betting that it would get a fair look, and so we’re gonna see how it does by itself.”

Jones contends that sports betting proceeds could help increase state revenues for the HOPE scholarship and help pay for expanded offerings such as scholarships for technical schools and early childhood learning.  

“I think you’re going to need to pick up additional revenue streams [for those programs], and this one is legal in 36 other states,” he said. 

Jones also would like to see a school vouchers measure pass. The bill would provide Georgia students in low-performing schools with $6,000 scholarships to pay for private school or certain other educational costs.  

“If we can get final passage, that will be a big win for us,” Jones said. 

Legislative Democrats have criticized the bill for diverting money from the public school system and noted that the scholarship amount is insufficient to cover the full cost of private-school tuition.  

“Six thousand dollars could be the difference between closing the gap for those families that would like to have another option,” Jones said in response to that concern. “I think it’s a good first step.”  

A vouchers bill passed by the Senate is slated to be taken up by a House committee. If approved, it could be sent to the full House for a floor vote.  

“I’ve seen school voucher bills fail in the Senate. I’ve seen them fail in the House, and I’ve seen them pass both chambers,” Jones said. “But there’s never been a time when they were successful in passing both chambers, so we’ll just have to wait and see.”  

Jones is also optimistic about prospects for this year’s mental health bill.

After the bill breezed through the state House of Representatives, Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R-Marietta, has announced that the Senate Health and Human Services Committee will consider a modified version of the bill in a case of inter-chamber wrangling. 

“There’s a lot of subject matter there to tackle, a lot of moving parts,” Jones said. “We’re trying to get to a place where we’ll have something both chambers can agree on.”

Far more controversial is a bill that would prohibit transgender youths in Georgia from receiving either hormone-replacement therapy or gender-affirming surgery even if their parents and doctors approve.  

­­­“I don’t think we need to make it OK for something as drastic as trying to either through medication or surgical procedures …. do permanent changes to a child that could have significant long-term effects in a negative way,” Jones said.

The lieutenant governor said he is not concerned the controversial measure could damage Georgia’s reputation with large businesses.  

“I haven’t heard from the business community at all on this,” he said. “There will be things we do that the business community doesn’t like … but in most cases, it’s not the majority.”

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The NAACP – along with state legislators and other politicians – has filed two federal complaints over Wellstar Health System’s decision last year to close Atlanta hospitals in majority-Black areas.

Wellstar’s decision to close two Atlanta-area hospitals, Atlanta Medical Center and Atlanta Medical Center-South, has damaged the health-care rights of Black patients, the complaints allege, and left patients south of Interstate 20 without a nearby emergency room and other medical services. 

The first complaint asks the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate Wellstar’s tax-exempt status. The second alleges the closures violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act and is being filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights. 

“They imposed great harm and that harm continues today,” Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, said Wednesday. The two hospitals in majority-Black areas closed, while Wellstar hospitals in majority-white areas have remained open, Orrock said. Along with Orrock and the NAACP, Rep. Kim Schofield, D-Atlanta, has signed on to the complaints. 

Soon after Wellstar closed the hospitals, the organization announced that it would seek to form a partnership with Augusta University Hospital System. The potential partnership with the state’s sole public medical school could also include building a new hospital in Columbia County, which is 71.3% white, according to the complaint.

“As it abandons a minority community, leaving it in far worse straits regarding health care and access to care, there is some irony in Wellstar’s CEO’s statement about its current plans [that] ‘We would improve the health of the community … and expand access to quality care for all Georgians,’” the complaints note.  

But Wellstar denied the validity of the complaints in a statement issued last night. 

“The suggestion that Wellstar Health System in any way discriminated against patients and communities is outrageous and false,” the statement said. “We are the largest provider of charity care in the state of Georgia.” 

“We are focused and committed to continue serving diverse communities throughout the region and providing them the specialized programs and resources they need,” the statement continued.

The federal government has an interest in Wellstar’s decision to close the two facilities because the system earns a significant amount of revenue from the federally funded Medicaid and Medicare programs. 

Wellstar should have developed a plan to meet community needs instead of closing the Atlanta hospitals, the complaint alleges. The IRS requires tax-exempt hospitals to assess community needs every three years and implement a strategy to address those needs. 

“Wellstar’s action deprives Black and other minority patients of crucial services,” the second complaint contends. “Wellstar should be held to account and required to repair the damage it has caused.

“We ask the Office for Civil Rights to investigate Wellstar’s actions, which have the effect of causing disparate harm to people of color.”

The complaints note that the Wellstar system had net assets of $2.67 billion in fiscal 2021. 

The closure of the two Atlanta facilities also led the medical practices associated with them to either move to less-diverse areas or close, forcing patients to travel long distances to get outpatient care, the complaints state.  

“Many patients who want to continue to see their own doctors now must travel across the large, traffic-congested metro area to reach them,” the complaints note, giving the example of a patient with diabetes formerly treated at Wellstar’s downtown Atlanta facility who now must take two buses and travel 20 miles to reach Austell, a suburb of Atlanta, for treatment.  

But Wellstar denied the validity of the complaints in a statement issued Wednesday night. 

“The suggestion that Wellstar Health System in any way discriminated against patients and communities is outrageous and false,” the statement said. “We are the largest provider of charity care in the state of Georgia.” 

“We are focused and committed to continue serving diverse communities throughout the region and providing them the specialized programs and resources they need,” the statement continued, noting that the hospital system had to find a buyer for the now-shuttered facilities since February 2020. 

Tax-exempt hospitals are increasingly in the news for their alleged failures to meet community needs. 

Recently, a Pennsylvania court denied property tax exemptions to four hospitals in the Tower Hospital system outside of Philadelphia after the local school district claimed the hospitals acted more like for-profit than non-profit entities. The decision was based in large part on what the court saw as excessive CEO pay.  

Wellstar’s CEO, Candice Saunders, earned $2.5 million in 2020, according to the hospital system’s IRS filings posted on its website. The hospital system received a “B” grade in the Lown Institute’s social responsibility index, which measures hospital outcomes, value and equity.

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ATLANTA – A new bill with bipartisan support would, if passed, take the first step toward creating “prosperity planning districts” around Georgia’s ten Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).  

“These planning districts allow … governments as well as private and philanthropic interests to leverage their resources to support innovation, technology, entrepreneurship at our HBCUs and modernize the campuses and surrounding communities,” said state Sen. Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta, who introduced the measure this week.  

The idea is to leverage the resources of the HBCUs to improve the economic and workforce prospects of surrounding communities, Halpern said. If eventually created, such prosperity planning districts around HBCUs would likely be the first of their kind in the country.  

“Perhaps some mixed-use housing could be developed on land owned by our HBCUs, also creating another revenue stream for the schools themselves,” Halpern said.

Halpern also suggested that funding for broadband upgrades could benefit both the colleges and their surrounding communities.  

Halpern’s bill proposes creating an 11-member commission within the state’s Department of Community Affairs to spearhead research about the needs of communities around the state’s HBCUs, with an eye toward recommending economic development measures around those campuses.

The commission would establish advisory committees for planning districts around Albany State University, Savannah State University, the Atlanta University Center, Fort Valley State University in Middle Georgia, and Paine College in Augusta.  

The proposal grew out of a Senate study committee focused on HBCUs that was chaired by Halpern and met several times last fall.  

Halpern is the main sponsor of the new bill, which has garnered support from Republican cosponsors Sens. Jason Anavitarte of Dallas, Brandon Beach of Alpharetta, and Billy Hickman of Statesboro.

It has been assigned to the Senate Economic Development and Tourism Committee, which is chaired by Beach.

This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.

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One night last month, a 9-year-old boy who had autism and talked about killing himself was among about 70 foster care children and youth under state supervision sleeping in hotels across Georgia.

Georgia’s designated health insurer for foster care, Amerigroup Community Care, had denied the boy placement in a psychiatric residential treatment facility, said Audrey Brannen, coordinator of complex care for Georgia’s child welfare agency. He stayed in a hotel for more than a month before receiving a temporary emergency placement in a foster home, she said.

The boy and the other children staying in the hotels lacked permanent placements, Brannen said, and many weren’t getting help for their complex mental and behavioral needs.

The frustration over gaps in care had gotten so bad that Candice Broce, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Human Services, sent a scathing six-page letter to the state Medicaid agency in August — signaling an unusual interagency conflict. She argued that Amerigroup, a unit of Elevance Health, isn’t being held accountable for failures in care, and that its foster care contract should not be renewed.

“Simply put, the state’s most vulnerable children cannot access the physical, mental, or behavioral health treatment they need — and deserve,” Broce wrote.

Amerigroup declined to comment on Broce’s remarks specifically, saying it had not seen her letter. But Michael Perry, an Amerigroup Georgia spokesperson, said the insurer hosts collaborative monthly meetings with state agencies to hear any concerns and will “continue to work on behalf of these vulnerable individuals to ensure they have access to the appropriate healthcare and support services they need to be successful.”

Such problems extend beyond Georgia, according to Sandy Santana, executive director of the national advocacy group Children’s Rights. While foster care grabs headlines mainly in cases of abuse or neglect — even deaths — the failures of states and insurers in providing adequate health care for these children are widespread and occur largely without public scrutiny.

“These kids cycle in and out of ERs, and others are not accessing the services,” said Santana, whose group has filed lawsuits in more than 20 states over foster care problems. “This is an issue throughout the country.”

Nearly all children in foster care are eligible for Medicaid, the state-federal program for those with low incomes, but states decide on the delivery mechanism. Georgia is among at least 10 states that have turned to managed-care companies to deliver specialized services exclusively for foster kids and others under state supervision. At least three more — North Carolina, New Mexico, and Oklahoma — are taking similar steps. But regardless of the structure, getting timely access to care for many of these vulnerable kids is a problem, Santana said.

Obtaining mental health care for privately insured children can be a struggle too, of course, but for children in state custody, the challenge is even greater, said Dr. Lisa Zetley, a Milwaukee pediatrician and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Foster Care, Adoption, and Kinship Care.

“This is a unique population,” she said. “They have experienced quite of bit of toxic stress prior to entering foster care.”

For states that use specialty managed care for these kids, transparency and oversight remain spotty and the quality of the care remains a troubling unknown, said Andy Schneider, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

Illinois, for example, has paid more than $350 million since 2020 to insurance giant Centene Corp. to manage health coverage for more than 35,000 current and former foster care children. But last year, an investigation by the Illinois Answers Project newsroom found Centene’s YouthCare unit repeatedly failed to deliver basic medical services such as dental visits and immunizations to thousands of these kids. Federal officials are now probing allegations about the contract.

Centene said YouthCare has not been informed of any probe. In a statement, the company said Illinois Answers Project’s reporting was based on outdated information and didn’t account for its recent progress as it works “to ensure that families have the access they need to high-quality care and services.”

In some cases, child advocates say, the care kids do get is not appropriate. In Maryland, the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, Disability Rights Maryland, and Children’s Rights filed a lawsuit this month against the state accusing it of failing to conduct adequate oversight of psychotropic drug prescribing for children in its foster care system. As many as 34% the state’s foster children are given psychotropic drugs, court documents said, although most of them don’t have a documented psychiatric diagnosis.

In Georgia, Lisa Rager said she and her husband, Wes, know well the hurdles to obtaining services for foster kids. The suburban Atlanta couple has cared for more than 100 foster children and adopted 11 of them from state custody.

She said one child waited more than a year to see a specialist. Getting approvals for speech or occupational therapy is “a lot of trouble.”

Rager said she pays out-of-pocket for psychiatric medications for three of her children because of insurance hassles. “It’s better for me to pay cash than wait on Amerigroup,” she said.

Such problems occur often, Broce said in her letter. Amerigroup’s “narrow definition for ‘medically necessary services’ is — on its face — more restrictive than state and federal standards,” she wrote.

“Far too often, case managers and foster families are told that the next available appointment is weeks or months out,” she told the state’s Joint Appropriations Committee on Jan. 17. Broce added that her agency has formed a legal team to fight Amerigroup treatment denials.

Amerigroup’s Perry said its clinical policies are approved by the state, and follow regulatory and care guidelines.

In a recent 12-month period, Amerigroup received $178.6 million in government funds for its specialty foster care plan that serves about 32,000 Georgia children, with the large majority being foster children and kids who have been adopted from state custody. The contract is currently up for rebidding.

David Graves, a spokesperson for the Department of Community Health, which runs Medicaid in the state, said the agency would not comment on Broce’s letter because it’s part of the contract renewal process. Graves said the agency regularly monitors the quality of care that children in state custody receive. He pointed to a state report that showed Amerigroup did well on several metrics, such as use of asthma medication.

But Melissa Haberlen DeWolf, research and policy director for the nonprofit Voices for Georgia’s Children, said the majority of kids cycling through the state’s emergency departments for mental illness are in foster care.

“The caregivers we speak to are desperate for behavioral health care coordination help — finding providers and getting appointments, understanding how to manage behaviors and medication, and prevent crises, and sharing health information between providers,” she said.

To fix these problems, Zetley, the pediatrician, recommends creating a larger benefit package for foster kids, coordinating care better, and raising Medicaid reimbursement rates to attract more providers to these managed-care networks.

Contracts with managed-care companies also should be performance-based, with financial penalties if needed, said Kim Lewis, managing attorney of the National Health Law Program’s Los Angeles offices.

“Managed care is only as good as the state’s ability to manage the contract and to make sure that what they’re getting is what they are paying for,” she said. “It doesn’t work by just, you know, hoping for the best and ‘Here’s the check.’”

But in Georgia, the state has never financially penalized Amerigroup for failing to meet contractually mandated quality standards, Department of Community Health spokesperson Graves confirmed. He said the agency and Amerigroup work to resolve any issues brought to their attention.

Georgia has set up an oversight committee, with public meetings, to monitor the quality of Amerigroup’s performance. But the committee hasn’t met since August 2020, the state said last month. After KHN queries, Graves said the panel would start meeting again this year.

This article was originally published on Kasier Health News.

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