My name is Nick Alex, and chances are, you’ve never heard of me. But I am running to represent Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, in which many Now Habersham readers live, in next year’s Congressional election.
If you’re wondering if you’re in the 9th District, it consists of all of Banks, Fannin, Gilmer, Habersham, White, Jackson, Rabun, Stephens, Towns, Union counties, and parts of Gwinnett and Hall counties. My wife, Debbi, and I are your neighbors; we live in Rabun County.
Ours is a big and diverse district, and one with lots of pressing concerns, many of which are not being properly addressed by our current Congressman, Andrew Clyde. I’d like to describe a very few of them in hope you might consider casting your vote for me next November 3rd.
DOGE Guts Your Services
The first of these issues was very much in the headlines in the first months after President Trump was re-elected. The issue has faded from the headlines, but the impact has not. That issue is the enormous cuts of government people and government capabilities imposed by the DOGE regime—prior, that is, to Elon Musk’s very public falling-out with the President.
Rep. Clyde was a small businessman before he took office. I worked in various executive roles for three of the nation’s largest banks. The Congressman and I both know business, and we know what to do to save costs, and it’s exactly NOT what Doge did. Instead, Elon Musk and his legions fired huge numbers of good government servants, then, after the fact, checked to see what was broken, noted when constituents were particularly irate, and then hired some people back only after they discovered they should never have been fired in the first place. It was disruptive to many of you, to the government workers who held these jobs, and to the workings of our Republic. It still is. No wonder Musk was given his walking papers within a few months.
The President gave Musk free rein, but then quickly saw how bad it turned out. Social Security workers couldn’t be reached by phone to help the elderly with their checks. Health and Human Services personnel disappeared when they should have been continuing to help Georgians and others on all parts of the income spectrum, with no one to answer them. And, in one instance, so awful that it hurts to retell it:
The veterans who lost their doctor
At a rally in Gainesville earlier this year, I spoke with a doctor—she prefers that I not use her name—who had been working for the Veterans Administration for years, helping veterans with a very particular medical condition. When I spoke to her, the V.A. was on its way to cutting some 83,000 positions, including hers, under Musk’s blunt ax. She told me that, since she was one of the few specialists in NE Georgia with her expertise, her patients now must drive to Atlanta —a round-trip of as much as 4 hours — for help with their illness. This is not the way to deal with waste, fraud and abuse! Is this what you voted for?
Rep. Clyde hasn’t had a great deal to say about the DOGE cuts, but he did speak up in their favor earlier this year. A tweet on May 30 reads: “President Trump, Elon Musk, and the entire DOGE team have done remarkable work in exposing and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. Yet this isn’t the end of DOGE—it’s just the beginning. I look forward to these historic efforts delivering more savings to the American people.” Is that what you voted for?
The end of Medicaid as we know it
Let’s talk about healthcare, generally. What the federal government is now doing, with Rep. Clyde’s full support, is literally going to kill people. I know Affordable Care Act coverage isn’t perfect. But for many of you and our fellow citizens, it’s been a Godsend, along with ACA subsidies that help people at the bottom of the income scale afford to pay for their coverage. At the end of this year, 22 million people— 1.4 million of them from Georgia—will lose their subsidies, and likely will never be able to pay for it on their own; premiums are expected to rise 114 percent on average when the subsidies are no longer in place. I don’t know many people who’ll be able to afford that. For a Georgia family of 4, estimates are that the annual cost increase will be $16,100. This is outrageous. Estimates are that 500,000 Georgians will lose ACA medical coverage. It’s a sad fact that people will die without ACA healthcare coverage. Is this what you voted for?
And what’s going to happen to Medicaid is even worse. The notion that able-bodied people are getting help from Medicaid, as Clyde and his cadre contend, is absurd. The best estimates say that at most half of 1% are ineligible, and they should be found out. But that is no reason to essentially scrap the existing program rules altogether, when most people getting Medicaid desperately need it, and may soon be left without it.
The supposed Andrew Clyde “fix” is to force Medicaid recipients under 65 to “prove” EVERY SIX MONTHS that they still need healthcare. How are they supposed to do that? Through a new, complicated red tape process done online or on paper, many of them will not be able to manage at all. A similar red tape process already used in Georgia, for the ‘Georgia Pathways’ Medicaid enrollment program, has been a complete failure. Statewide, and after two years, only 9,881 people (3%) have been able to enroll, out of 359,000 eligible. Despite this failure, this system will be the model for Medicaid in Georgia. If eligible citizens don’t complete these complex forms perfectly every six months, they will lose their coverage. Why does a middle-aged man with cerebral palsy or a 20-year-old mother with disabling lung disease have to prove their need every six months? Because Andrew Clyde and his ilk say one of them may be lying. All public audits say they are not. Without their Medicaid coverage, thousands of Georgians will die over the next 10 years. Is this what you voted for?
As a Moderate Democrat, I want to find a way to work with both Democrats and Republicans to provide affordable access to healthcare for everyone across the 9th Congressional District. From my business experience, I know we can make government services like ACA and Medicare more efficient. And I know we can do it without forcing more Georgians to go without healthcare and ending up in our hospitals’ Emergency Room — or worse.
That’s what I hope you will vote for in our next Congressional election.
Nick Alex
Rabun County
