Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and even a dentist or two make up the ranks of legislators in the Georgia General Assembly. (Rebecca Grapevine / Healthbeat)

Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and even a dentist or two make up the ranks of legislators in the Georgia General Assembly.

Credit: Rebecca Grapevine / Healthbeat

The typical path to becoming a politician includes law school, public policy, or government work — not necessarily medical training.

But doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and even a dentist or two make up the ranks of legislators in the Georgia General Assembly. They are a vocal and highly educated minority of more than a dozen medicos in a sea of lawyers and business people.

Their frontline experience guides how they vote and their championing of bills to improve Georgia health.

While they are divided on some core issues – like Medicaid expansion and abortion rights – their shared professional backgrounds provide common ground on many other health issues.

Healthbeat recently caught up with three of the state’s elected medical professionals about why they decided to run for office and what they bring to the legislative, rather than the operating, table.

 

Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick: From hand surgery to policy wonk

The Marietta Republican has served since 2017 in the state Senate, where she chairs the Children and Families committee. Her journey to medicine started when a local doctor told the Kentucky teenager to consider medicine instead of nursing. That inspiration led to her becoming a hand surgeon, which requires years of specialized training.

Georgia state Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, a Marietta Republican, is a retired hand surgeon who decided to run for the state legislature to bring a medical perspective to the General Assembly. (Courtesy Kay Kirkpatrick)

Georgia state Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, a Marietta Republican, is a retired hand surgeon who decided to run for the state legislature to bring a medical perspective to the General Assembly.

Credit: Courtesy Kay Kirkpatrick

Why she decided to run: When a seat in her district became open around the time she retired from active practice, Kirkpatrick said fellow doctors asked her to run to represent health care interests at the Capitol. “‘How hard could it be?’” she recalled thinking, but quickly learned, “It’s a lot harder than being a hand surgeon.”

What she brings to the table: “We bring knowledge of what actually works and doesn’t work, and that allows me and my colleagues in the health care business and the legislature to really bring some expertise that otherwise is lacking,” Kirkpatrick said, adding that physicians bring a strong work ethic, good communication skills, and attention to detail to their work as legislators.

Life outside politics: Kirkpatrick is a volunteer in the Georgia State Defense Force’s medical unit, which supports the state’s National Guard. It requires a weekend of training and drills every month, and Kirkpatrick has kept her medical license active for this purpose.

Biggest health accomplishment in the legislature: Kirkpatrick cites her work on prior authorization reforms in Georgia as a major accomplishment, pointing to a bill passed in 2021 that implemented prior authorization transparency requirements for health insurers as one example.

This year, a bill that limits how insurers can use artificial intelligence to decide on prior authorizations is close to final passage, having sailed through the Senate and the House with unanimous approval.

“People know that I’m going to tell the truth and that I know what I’m talking about. And so my bills usually tend to pass, and not all of them immediately, but most of them do,” Kirkpatrick said.

 

Rep. Michelle Au: Anesthesiologist turned advocate

Au, who represents Johns Creek, is an anesthesiologist who was first elected as a state senator in 2020. Redistricting spurred the Democrat to run in 2022 for the state House, where she has served since.

Why she decided to run: Au said her decision to run as an anesthesiologist and a mother of three wasn’t “natural or obvious” but was driven by her dissatisfaction with state and national policy decisions, including Georgia’s 2019 law banning most abortions.

“One thing led to another in terms of my health advocacy, and I recognized that maybe instead of trying to find someone else to run for that seat, that I should run for the open Senate seat in my district,” she said. “We did not have enough doctors at the state level to inform some of the legislation that they were passing out, sometimes in an ill-advised way.”

Rep. Michelle Au, a Democrat from Johns Creek, is an anesthesiologist. (Courtesy of Michelle Au)

Rep. Michelle Au, a Democrat from Johns Creek, is an anesthesiologist.

Credit: Courtesy of Michelle Au

What she brings to the table: Au said Americans generally distrust politicians but she thinks there is still trust in medical professionals.

“I get a little bit more leeway, and people are more inclined to look at some of the things I do, maybe first through the lens of ‘she’s a physician, she may have expertise in this,’” instead of solely as a Democrat, she said.

Au tries to approach talking about politics the same way she approaches talking to patients.

“I try not to push my own opinions or agendas as much,” instead focusing on achieving the best outcome for the majority of her voters. She also finds value in bringing underrepresented perspectives to the legislature, as a doctor and a Chinese-American.

Bipartisanship is important to her: “I did not come up through the traditional party apparatus,” Au told Healthbeat, and she recognizes that getting bills passed as a member of the minority party is tough.

But passing bills isn’t the only way she measures success. Instead, she focuses on how she helps shape bills as they move through the process and serves as a respected resource for colleagues. She also tries to move the needle on key issues, focusing on pragmatic steps forward.

Legislative pragmatism: Au cited gun safety and tobacco tax legislation as two long-term priorities. And while her bills haven’t yet gotten full legislative approval, she’s seen incremental progress.

She said even some Democrats as well as most Republicans were unwilling to sign on to a bill requiring universal background checks to purchase a gun when she started six years ago.

Now, a measure she originally proposed that would provide a tax credit for safe gun storage measures and later taken up by Republican lawmakers is close to final passage — albeit with the addition of language for a four-day sales tax holiday for purchasing guns and other paraphernalia.

Au would be happy to see her initial idea for the tax credit passed into law despite the changes – an example of her legislative pragmatism.

“It shows how the culture has changed,” Au said. “That was a bill the Republican leadership supported … I don’t think that that could have happened when I first joined the legislature,” she said. That bill could still pass this session.

What she worries about: Au said she’s worried about the erosion of trust in science, especially when it comes to vaccines.

“Public health can sometimes be a victim of its own success,” Au said. “People having not had to encounter what it’s like to have a non-functioning or poorly functioning public health system might feel that a lot of the measures that we take … are unnecessary.” That weakening of public health systems could take a long time to repair and cause needless suffering.

“Obviously you can’t take back mortality, you can’t take back injury, but even more so than that, like when you damage trust, that is extremely hard to undo,” she said.

 

Sen. Chuck Hufstetler: Foodie, anesthetist

Hufstetler, a Rome Republican, has served in the state Senate since 2012. He has held many other roles, including running a restaurant, working for corporations like Anheuser-Busch and Welch Foods, becoming a master baker, and then an anesthetist after training at Emory University.

Operating room to Gold Dome: Hufstetler said anesthetists are similar to physician assistants but work primarily in operating rooms under the supervision of anesthesiologists. His entrance to Emory’s School of Medicine coincided with the end of his time on the Floyd County commission. “I thought I was done with politics,” he said. But in 2012, when one of the candidates he was supporting for state Senate decided to drop out, Hufstetler stepped in to run — and won.

Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, a Republican from Rome, is also an anesthetist. (Courtesy of Chuck Hufstetler)

Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, a Republican from Rome, is also an anesthetist.

Credit: Courtesy of Chuck Hufstetler

Hufstetler says his varied life experiences have contributed to his success as a lawmaker.

“There’s some people that don’t know health care, and there’s some people in health care that don’t know anything else,” he said. “I can maybe look at the big scheme a little bit better than if I didn’t have all those different experiences.”

How his personal experience drives his legislative agenda: Hufstetler said his lengthy experience trying to get credentialed to work at a hospital with a staffing shortage spurred him to sponsor Senate Bill 162. That bill would speed up the credentialing process for medical professionals by creating a uniform system, Hufstetler said.

“If you’re credentialed in one location, you will be credentialed everywhere,” he said. “This will help to bring more people into Georgia” by making it quicker for medical professionals to start working. That bill passed unanimously in both chambers and is awaiting Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature.

His greatest legislative accomplishment: Hufstetler said he’s especially proud of his work on surprise medical billing because it protects ordinary people from high medical costs.

“Medical bills are the number one reason for bankruptcy in Georgia. … Somebody’s in an accident or something happens. They’re not in their hometown, maybe, and through no fault of their own, and suddenly they’ve got massive medical bills that are out of network,” Hufstetler said. His bill aimed to stop that.

Preventive care a priority: Hufstetler said the state should prioritize policies that reduce long-term costs: “I worry that we’re not doing the stuff upstream to take care of people downstream.”

To that end, he’s eager to see his bill allowing pharmacists to prescribe HIV prevention medications get final approval. Preventing HIV would save the state millions of dollars, he said. That bill sailed through the House and Senate and awaits final approval from the Senate.

Like Au, he’d like to see the state increase the cigarette tax to try to decrease smoking, which drives up health care costs.

Mixed feelings on Medicaid expansion: Hufstetler said if he had been a federal politician when the Affordable Care Act passed in 2014, he would have voted against it. He thinks Medicaid is generally inefficient and people fare better on private insurance.

“But as a state, I felt like there were billions of dollars that could have helped our state by providing preventative medical care to individuals, and since they’re not getting that preventative care, I think we’re paying for it in a different way,” Hufstetler said.

Other medical professionals in the Georgia legislature include:

Rebecca Grapevine is a reporter covering public health in Atlanta for Healthbeat. Contact Rebecca at rgrapevine@healthbeat.org. This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Healthbeat.

Tags: Georgia  Georgia Politics  health  georgia legislature  medicine 
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