House Health and Human Services Chairwoman Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta, has championed legislation in the House that extends Medicaid coverage for new mothers.

ATLANTA — While a bill that extends Medicaid coverage for new moms has sailed through votes on both sides of the Capitol, funds for the legislation were reduced in the proposed Senate budget.

The measure that would extend postpartum Medicaid coverage from two months to six months garnered broad and bipartisan support under the Gold Dome but the rocky economy led Senate budget writers to reduce funds to only cover a three-month extension.

Championed by the influential House Health and Human Services Chair Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta, the legislation has flown through committees and a House floor vote. But the votes took place pre-pandemic, when state revenues were better than previous years.

Now dollars have been cut back and the bill has an added caveat — the extension can only be put in place if funds allow it.

Health advocates urged Senate committee members Wednesday to call on their appropriations colleagues to commit to funding the full six-month extension. What was originally nearly a $20 million investment in Georgia mothers has been downsized to a little more than $2.3 million.

As it stands, new moms in Georgia earning less than double the federal poverty rate qualify for two months of coverage after pregnancy.

But researchers and health care advocates have long said this is not enough and most have pressured lawmakers to extend it up to a full year. Now, the six-month increase that was touted as a step in the right direction has been downgraded.

Amber Mack, research and policy analyst with the Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Georgia, reminded lawmakers that the pandemic has presented new challenges for Peach State mothers.

“We are currently facing a maternal mortality crisis that has the potential to be exasperated by COVID-19,” Mack said Wednesday. “Due to our overwhelmed health care system, we’ve seen mother’s being released from the hospital early or having cancelled appointments. Access to preventative and postpartum care is limited due to that.”

The pandemic has added stressors to many families — on top of the more than 60,000 positive coronavirus cases, the state is seeing record-high unemployment.

Mack said these factors as well as isolation due to social distancing requirements can add stress to new moms and potentially lead to higher rates of postpartum mood disorders.

A larger extension of Medicaid benefits, she said, would support rural hospitals that have been hit the hardest by COVID-19 and are teetering on the edge of closure due to low reimbursement rates.

“One mother’s death is too much, we do have a problem with this,” Cooper said while addressing her Senate counterparts. “I just appreciate in this very, very tight budget time, for us even getting some money put in … so that we can begin this work.”

Despite a unanimous vote from the Senate committee to send it forward, public testimony expressed concern that funds will be slashed.

Devin Barrington-Ward, managing director of the Black Futurist Group — a social justice firm, highlighted calls from protesters across the nation to do away with police funding and redirect dollars to issues such as this one.

“Black lives matter and that means black mommas have to matter and black babies must matter,” he said. “ … While what has happened here is a great movement, we need to recognize that we shouldn’t be giving ourselves a pat on the back, but that we should continue to be doing the work.”

A popular provision to fund lactation care for new mothers has been halved from its original $250,000 investment to $125,000 in the Senate version of the budget.

Merrilee Gober, who represents a number of health care groups, said while 84% of Georgia mothers leave the hospital able to breastfeed, only 22% breast-feed up to the recommended six-month mark.

“Our mothers and babies with the lowest rates of breastfeeding are our black mothers and babies,” she said. “The disparities are significant and while women with private insurance can access clinical lactation care as a required benefit, mothers and babies on Medicaid are not able to access that care at this time.”

Ben Watson, R-Savannah, Senate Health and Human Services chairman,  reminded speakers multiple times the committee does not have a say in appropriations.

But the plea from advocates showed the volatile nature of Georgia’s upended budget, in which agencies and programs could lose or gain funding drastically if not protected by lawmakers.