Whether to expand Medicaid may be Georgia’s biggest health care decision in many years.

The state will decide whether to bring more than 600,000 uninsured Georgians into the Medicaid rolls, under the health reform law, at a 10-year cost that state officials have estimated at more than $4 billion.

In a new GHN Commentary, state Rep. Pat Gardner (D-Atlanta), a proponent of the health reform law, says expanding Medicaid would bring billions of federal dollars to the state, as well as stop the shifting of the cost of caring for the uninsured to those who have private insurance.

“And then there’s this: Expanding Medicaid is simply the right thing to do. The people impacted by the expansion are not freeloaders,’’ Gardner writes. “They are the working poor – Georgians with an annual income up to $15,400 for an individual or $26,300 for a family of three.’’

Here’s a link to Gardner’s Commentary.

Georgia Health News welcomes Commentary submissions. If you would like to propose a Commentary piece for Georgia Health News, please e-mail Andy Miller, editor of GHN, at amiller@georgiahealthnews.com