ATLANTA (November 14, 2008) – State Senator Judson Hill (R-Marietta) presided over the third Senate Healthcare Transformation Study Committee meeting held yesterday at the Capitol where a grim outlook on the future of federal and state health care was presented. Dennis Smith, who was the Director of the US Medicaid and Medicare Services for the past seven years and now serves as a Senior Fellow in Health Care Reform at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, stressed action needs to be taken now at the state level to ensure the future quality of the state’s Medicaid, SCHIP, and Peachcare programs.
“Doing nothing to address our health care system is simply not an option,” said Sen. Hill. “We need to find sustainable, long-term health care solutions to fund these programs rather than the quick fix budget solutions that seem to take place more often than not. Discovering ways to decrease the number of uninsured citizens, increase support for our physicians, improve patient access to quality care, and ultimately lower health care costs for all taxpayers are simply the right thing to do for the state of Georgia.”