9 Ways Stacey Abrams is a Champion for Health Care

Stacey Abrams has a vision for Georgia that includes educating bold and ambitious children, creating a fair and diverse economy, and building an effective and engaged government. A critical component of that vision is ensuring our workers and their families have access to quality, affordable health care, and expanding Medicaid will be her first step in achieving this goal.

Stacey’s Record: Stacey Abrams has consistently engaged with Georgia’s rural, suburban and urban communities across the state to understand what Georgians are facing in an effort to improve their access to health care. Her experience and deep understanding of the role the private, nonprofit, and government sectors play in improving health care access make her the most qualified candidate to expand access to care for all Georgians.

1. Legislative Leadership: As House Minority Leader, Stacey Abrams introduced legislation to expand Medicaid in our state, and led the House Democratic Caucus in a statewide campaign to raise awareness about the crucial nature of expansion for health care access, rural hospital support, and job creation. She mobilized Democrats to host town halls, engage with the media, provide local communities with toolkits, and ensured constituents in every part of the state were hearing from elected officials on the issue.
2. Legal Experience: Stacey Abrams began her career as a tax attorney and is an expert on health care finance. She understands the vital role that Medicaid expansion plays in supporting not just our rural hospitals, but our safety net hospitals that provide care for the vulnerable.
3. Leading on Reproductive Justice: Stacey Abrams has led the fight to protect reproductive health care access in Georgia. Abrams blocked legislation that attempted to roll back reproductive rights, successfully stopping a eugenics anti-abortion push. She also led the fight to substantially weaken a 20-week abortion ban and has supported legal opposition that has stymied the law’s implementation for 6 years. Under her leadership, no TRAP (Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers) legislation has passed Georgia, and she has been recognized as a Living Legend by Planned Parenthood of the Southeast, a recipient of the national Champion for Women’s Health Award from Planned Parenthood Action Fund and received local support from the Feminist Women’s Health Center. In 2014, she was awarded the first Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award and has been endorsed by EMILY’s List, and has been endorsed by NARAL Pro-Choice America.
4. Addressing Maternal Health: More than half of Georgia counties do not have an OB-GYN provider, and our state has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation. This urgent problem demands leaders with real experience who can take swift action. Stacey Abrams understands a holistic approach to increase access to high quality care is needed to provide better outcomes for our mothers and babies. Funding rural hospitals via Medicaid expansion is a crucial first step in addressing this issue. Stacey will also leverage state and federal programs to incentivize more doctors and medical personnel to locate in under-served areas, and she will work with practitioners to reduce our maternal and infant mortality rates and increase access to care.
5. Supporting the Elderly: Stacey Abrams has worked to support health services for the elderly. As governor, she is committed to ensuring that expanding Medicaid would contribute to funding of assisted living centers, which would help elderly Georgians better afford housing and in home health care.
6. Protecting Workers: Stacey has spearheaded critical legislation combatting the misclassification of workers as independent contractors, which denies them access to health insurance through their employer.
7. Leading Activism: Stacey Abrams knows that the federal government and grassroots organizations play a key role in our state’s health care. Through Georgia Resists, a project she launched as House Minority Leader at the onset of the Trump Administration to push back against dangerous legislation at all levels of government, she galvanized activists around the state to engage with their legislators when Congress considered repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
8. Championing the Affordable Care Act: When the Affordable Care Act was first implemented, Stacey Abrams saw that the state was not funding sufficient outreach during open enrollment. She led the members of the Georgia House Democratic Caucus to host their own open enrollment sessions, teaching their constituent members how to enroll. Stacey traveled to Republican-held districts to hold similar sessions. Her nonprofit New Georgia Project also hired canvassers in rural South Georgia communities to answer questions and help enroll Georgians.
9. Addressing Mental Health Services: Mental health care access is a critical component of health care that is too often overlook and unfunded. Stacey Abrams has personal experience navigating the effects of untreated mental illness in her family, and understands how critical access to mental health care services are for our state. Stacey’s family lacked health insurance when she was growing up, and her brother’s undiagnosed bipolar disorder led him to self-medicate with drugs, and eventually contributed towards his incarceration. Medicaid expansion will fund critical mental health services throughout Georgia and especially in rural, often-underserved communities so that individuals will have their needs addressed by the health care system rather than face the criminal justice system.