Georgia’s Medicaid work requirement program spent twice as much on administrative costs as on health care, GAO says

The GAO analysis, which does not include all the Pathways administrative expenses detailed by the news outlets, shows that as of April the Georgia program had spent $54.2 million on administrative costs since 2021, compared to $26.1 million spent on health care costs. Nearly 90% of administrative expenditures came from the federal budget, the report concluded, meaning that Georgia’s experiment is being funded by taxpayers around the country. Federal spending will likely increase given that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has approved $6 million more in administrative costs not reflected in this report because it was published before the state submitted invoices.