Georgia Medicaid Recipients Will Have A Harder Time Finding Doctors

Poor Georgians will have a more difficult time finding doctors this year, because fewer physicians will take Medicaid patients. They say the federal government is not paying enough for the care they provide to low-income residents.

For the past two years, Georgia doctors have seen a bump in Medicaid pay under the Affordable Care Act. It was meant to encourage more doctors to accept poor patients and to equal the amount physicians receive for Medicare patients. But this year that’s going away. The Urban Institute estimates the payments are going down by about 42 percent nationally and nearly 35 percent in Georgia.