2024 Georgia Legislative Priorities

Victory in the fight against cancer requires bold new public policies that promote cancer prevention, early detection of cancer, and expand access to quality, affordable health care. Lawmakers make many decisions that impact the lives of Georgia residents impacted by cancer and their leadership is vital to defeating this disease. In 2023 the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) will work with the Georgia General Assembly and Administration on legislative and regulatory efforts that provide affordable, adequate access to health insurance including Medicaid, ensure adequate appropriations funding for lifesaving cancer screening programs, and enact prevention policies that help people who use tobacco products quit and deter kids from ever using tobacco products. We will be making the following fact-based policies a priority and ask for your support:

Ensuring Access to Quality Care

• Medicaid Expansion: ACS CAN will advocate for low-income individuals and families to have access to comprehensive health insurance coverage and non-emergent medical transportation services through state Medicaid programs. We will support policies that preserve funding and access to Medicaid for low-income parents and adults including changes to Medicaid that reduce coverage, benefits, eligibility, or quality of care and improvement of Medicaid systems. ACS CAN will advocate for full Medicaid expansion in states that have not increased eligibility up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

Cancer Prevention and Early Detection

• Breast and Cervical Cancer: ACS CAN will advocate to maintain funding of $3.3 million for the Georgia Breast and Cervical Cancer Program, the state breast and cervical cancer screening program for low income uninsured and underinsured women administered by the Georgia Department of Public Health

Reducing the Toll of Tobacco

• Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Funding: ACS CAN will work to increase funding for fact-based, statewide tobacco prevention and cessation programs to $10.6 million. Increasing funding to $10.6 million will prevent an estimated 3,100 kids from growing up to be adults who smoke, save an estimated 1,000 lives, and save the state $49.6 million in future health care costs.
• Access to Tobacco Cessation: ACS CAN will advocate for all insurance plans, including the state Medicaid program, to provide a comprehensive cessation benefit that covers individual, group, and telephone counseling and all FDA-approved tobacco cessation medications without cost-sharing or other barriers to accessing care.

Local Control

• Local governments are uniquely positioned to meet the needs of the people in their communities. ACS CAN supports their ability to pass laws that are proven to promote good health, well-being, and equality. Preserving local control is needed to pass innovative and proactive public health policies. ACS CAN works at the local, state, and federal levels; thus, it supports each level of government’s ability to implement policies for cleaner, safer, healthier communities. The right of local governments to pass public health policies stronger than state laws must be preserved to continue future advocacy efforts to reduce suffering and death from cancer.

For more information, contact: Fabienne Antoine-Nasser, ACS CAN Georgia Government Relations Director 

ACS CAN is making cancer a top priority for public officials and candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. ACS CAN empowers advocates across the country to make their voices heard and influence evidencebased public policy change as well as legislative and regulatory solutions that will reduce the cancer burden. As the American Cancer Society’s nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy affiliate, ACS CAN is critical to the fight for a world without cancer. For more information, please visit www.fightcancer.org.