KARL'S
PRIORITIES
Karl For Georgia
Working for you.
01
AFFORDABLE QUALITY HEALTHCARE
Expanding Medicaid is critical for family stability and community economic prosperity. Not only, will Medicaid expansion provide a lifeline for nearly half a million uninsured Georgians, but keep hospitals, currently struggling with uncompensated care costs, open. Over the last several years, nine rural Georgia hospitals have closed, and recently, two large Atlanta metropolitan hospitals have closed. The impact is a bed shortage, more costly procedures due to lack of preventative care, longer wait times for needed surgeries or ER visits and overburdened staff resources resulting in a poorer quality of care for all Georgians.
03
CLEAN WATER
The EPA recently announced an enforceable Maximum Contaminant Level of PFAS in our national water systems. PFAS or “forever chemicals” cause cancer. PFAS were found to be in 11 of the 53 public water facilities tested thus far in Georgia. While the federal infrastructure program has allocated $9 Billion nationally to help address this issue, it is much too little. In Clayton County alone, it is estimated a much needed new infrastructure/filtration system would cost at least $450 million dollars. Georgia needs to come up with an effective funding plan immediately for the ongoing monitoring and reduction of PFAS to mandated minimum levels in Georgia’s water systems.
05
MENTAL HEALTH AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
The need for mental health services is exploding in Georgia. As of 2022, 50% of our counties did not have a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist: Georgia ranks last in the country for access to mental health. Access to mental health and substance abuse treatment continues to be a major challenge for too many suffering with this disease and impacts the safety and prosperity of all Georgians. This is also a personal issue for me as a recovering alcoholic with more than 25 years of sobriety. I was lucky, I had access to treatment, and I got better. It will take a collaborative, bipartisan effort to fund, support and expand effective programs. The health and safety of our communities depend on it.
02
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
Legislating against a woman’s right to make her own family planning choices and her personal healthcare decisions amount to dangerous government overreach.
A woman’s healthcare choices need to be made in consultation with her doctor, not a politician. Rights every woman had decades ago, have now been legislatively taken away, in some cases jeopardizing a woman’s life. Georgia ranks 49th in terms of maternal and infant mortality, in part because of a lack of preventative and prenatal care for uninsured mothers.
04
CITIZEN RIGHTS
Currently Georgia citizens cannot qualify a ballot initiative as a referendum item through the collection of signatures. Instead, a ballot initiative must pass both the Georgia Senate and House with a 2/3 majority in each and be signed by the Governor. This effectively upholds any laws the Assembly makes circumventing the will of the people on controversial issues like Reproductive Rights. Over half of the states give their citizens the right to ballot initiative. Granting citizens the right to set their own legislative priorities creates a just democracy.
06
CHILD SAFETY
Protecting our children should be a bipartisan issue. In 2020, nearly 80,000 Georgia students in 6th through 12th grade reported having seriously considered attempting suicide. One in 6 children, ages 2-8 years old has a diagnosed mental, behavioral, and developmental disorder. Our schools are in urgent need of expanding critically understaffed school based mental health programs. Our legislators must be willing to develop and finance innovative programs to expand a mental health care work force for Georgia schools. Instead, our legislators turned child safety into a culture war, banning trans youth from sports and bathrooms, incentivizing our teachers to carry guns, and protecting our children from “dangerous ideologies “by teaching a revisionist history. Let’s address the real needs of Georgia’s children.