Georgia Health Cost Baseline: Transition Brief

The asks

ASK 1. Adopt the Georgia Health Cost Baseline, by executive order or memorandum, as the administration's affordability metric of record for individual coverage, defined by open specification v1.0.1 re-hosted on a state domain, and direct the Office of Planning and Budget to compute it for every county and statewide each plan year.

ASK 2. Publish an annual Renewal Shock report through the Governor's office/OPB: every county's Floor within 30 days of the plan-year Rate PUF posting, the full Baseline within 30 days of the Plan Attributes and Service Area PUFs, and the statewide average filed increase as announced by the state insurance regulator, each labeled proposed or approved, with no statewide average applied to any county.

ASK 3. Issue a week-one public statement before Open Enrollment closes (scheduled January 15, 2027): compare your full 12-month cost — premium plus deductible plus out-of-pocket maximum — not the premium alone, pointing Georgians to the state's published Baseline and to the state marketplace to enroll.

A vendor-neutral model executive order implementing the three asks is published with this brief at the URL above.

How to verify

Inputs. The plan-year Rate, Plan Attributes, and Service Area public use files from the state marketplace, and the CMS state-based-exchange public use file, each identified by sha256 in the specification's pinned-inputs table.

Command. pnpm evidence:ga-health-cost-baseline … from the public build repository; full arguments on the public page.

Expected output. A dataset whose sha256 is 2c38167878ae90b81b9b040ab9b8c89b39846194ff3d0c3d6a3c2e7181158ee0, and a per-county audit CSV: qualifying plan count, Floor, Ceiling, the plan identifiers that set each, completeness label, rate status. A rerun on the same inputs reproduces the same bytes; any difference is a defect and should be reported.

What this brief does not ask

It does not ask the Governor to direct Georgia Access, the Commissioner of Insurance, or the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire; Georgia Access is operated by that separately elected office, and nothing here depends on it. Where the asks refer to the state marketplace or the state insurance regulator, they refer only to files and figures those offices already publish. It does not ask the state to feature, procure, route to, contract with, or name Insurf. It does not ask for any appropriation, any preference among plans or issuers, or any change to a filing or rate-review process. The specification is public domain so the state can hold it without a relationship with its author.

Disclosures

Insurf is not affiliated with or endorsed by Georgia Access or any state, state-based marketplace, or insurance regulator; every figure is computed from public government filings.

A citation of this work is not an endorsement of Insurf, and Insurf will not describe any citation as one.

Insurf, Inc. is not a licensed insurance agency and does not sell insurance. Nothing in this brief offers, recommends, or prices any insurance product. Where Insurf's website offers enrollment support, it is provided by an individually licensed insurance producer whose commission compensation is disclosed there.

Contact: support@insurf.io

Model Executive Order: Georgia Health Cost Baseline

Draft for a transition policy committee. Vendor-neutral: this text names no company, publisher, or product. Bracketed figures are refreshed at issuance from the State's own computation under the specification. Authority citations are drawn from public sources (the Constitution of the State of Georgia, revised July 2025, and the Budget Act, O.C.G.A. § 45-12-70 et seq.) and must be confirmed by the Governor's counsel before signature.

STATE OF GEORGIA
EXECUTIVE ORDER [NUMBER]
BY THE GOVERNOR:

ESTABLISHING THE GEORGIA HEALTH COST BASELINE AS THE AFFORDABILITY METRIC OF RECORD FOR INDIVIDUAL HEALTH COVERAGE AND PROVIDING FOR ITS ANNUAL PUBLICATION

WHEREAS: The lowest filed monthly premium for an individual medical plan offered throughout an entire Georgia county, for a 40-year-old, non-tobacco, self-only, unsubsidized buyer with coverage effective January 1, ranges from $[FLOOR_MIN_MO] in [MIN_COUNTY] to $[FLOOR_MAX_MO] in [MAX_COUNTY], with a statewide median of $[FLOOR_MED_MO], as of [AS_OF_DATE] (completeness: [COMPLETENESS]; rate status: [RATE_STATUS]); and

WHEREAS: The cost of coverage to a Georgian is not the premium alone but the premium together with the deductible and the out-of-pocket maximum, and a measure of affordability that omits cost sharing misstates what coverage costs in a year of illness; and

WHEREAS: The data required to compute such a measure for every county are already published at no cost by the state health insurance marketplace, in its Rate, Plan Attributes, and Service Area public use files, and by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in its state-based-exchange public use file; and

WHEREAS: An open, versioned specification, dedicated to the public domain, defines the Georgia Health Cost Baseline so that any person holding the public use files can reproduce every figure byte for byte, and such a specification can be held and computed by the State without reliance on any private party; and

WHEREAS: The chief executive powers of this State are vested in the Governor by Article V, Section II, Paragraph I of the Constitution of the State of Georgia, and the Governor may require information in writing from executive officers and employees under Paragraph X of that Section; and the Office of Planning and Budget, established in the Office of the Governor by O.C.G.A. § 45-12-72, is charged by O.C.G.A. § 45-12-73 with strategic planning, program budgeting, and the measurement of agency performance against planned outcomes;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, [NAME], GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF GEORGIA, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of this State, do hereby ORDER:

ORDERED: That the Georgia Health Cost Baseline (the "Baseline"), as defined by the open specification titled Georgia Health Cost Baseline, version 1.0.1, dedicated to the public domain under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal dedication, is adopted as the affordability metric of record of this administration for individual health coverage in Georgia. For purposes of this Order:

(a) "Floor" means twelve times the lowest filed monthly premium among plans offered throughout the entire county under a full-county service area, for a 40-year-old, non-tobacco, self-only, unsubsidized buyer of an on-Marketplace individual medical plan effective January 1;

(b) "Ceiling" means the minimum, over those same plans, of twelve times the monthly premium plus the plan's in-network individual out-of-pocket maximum;

(c) "Statewide summary" means the unweighted median of a figure across counties, reported with the minimum and maximum county;

(d) "Renewal Shock" means each county's year-over-year change in Floor, and in Ceiling when computable; and

(e) every published figure shall carry a completeness label (PRELIMINARY, PROVISIONAL, or RECORD) and a rate-status label (proposed or approved), as the specification provides.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED: That the specification, version 1.0.1, is attached to this Order as Appendix A and shall be hosted, together with its hash, on a domain of this State before the first report required by this Order; that the Office of Planning and Budget may issue revised versions of the specification, each published with a version number and a changelog, and shall compute under the version in force at the time of each report; and that the Office of Planning and Budget shall itself compute the Baseline, within existing resources, consisting of the Floor, the Ceiling, and the statewide summary, for each of Georgia's 159 counties and statewide for each plan year, from the public use files identified in the specification, and shall publish with each computation the per-county audit file, the hash of each input file, and the hash of the resulting dataset, so that any person may reproduce the computation.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED: That the Office of Planning and Budget, on behalf of the Governor's office, shall publish an annual Renewal Shock report for each plan year consisting of: (a) every county's Floor, within 30 days of the state marketplace's posting of the plan-year Rate public use file; (b) the full Baseline for every county and statewide, within 30 days of the posting of the Plan Attributes and Service Area public use files; and (c) the statewide average filed increase as announced by the state insurance regulator, reported separately and as announced. Each figure shall be labeled proposed or approved according to the status of the rates from which it was computed. No statewide average shall be applied to, or presented as, the figure for any county.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED: That it is the policy of this administration that, in the final week before each Open Enrollment Period for individual coverage closes, beginning with the period scheduled to close January 15, 2027, the Office of the Governor issue a public statement advising Georgians to compare the full 12-month cost of coverage, premium plus deductible plus out-of-pocket maximum, rather than the premium alone, and pointing Georgians to the State's published Baseline and to the state marketplace to enroll; and that each agency, department, and office under the direction of the Governor that publishes health-coverage information for the public shall, consistent with applicable law, link to the State's published Baseline.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED: That nothing in this Order directs, or shall be construed to direct, the Commissioner of Insurance, the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire, or the state health insurance marketplace, Georgia Access, each of which acts under its own constitutional and statutory authority; that nothing in this Order authorizes or requires any procurement, contract, endorsement, preference among issuers or plans, or appropriation; that the Baseline shall be computed by the Office of Planning and Budget from public files, and this Order designates, prefers, or engages no vendor, publisher, or other private party; and that nothing in this Order creates any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the State of Georgia, its agencies, officers, or employees, or any other person.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED: That this Order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and within existing appropriations; that if any provision of this Order, or its application to any person or circumstance, is held invalid, the remainder of this Order and its application to other persons or circumstances shall not be affected; and that this Order shall take effect immediately and shall remain in effect until amended or rescinded.

This [day] day of [month], 2027.

GOVERNOR

Drafting notes (not part of the Order)

• Refresh at issuance. $[FLOOR_MIN_MO], [MIN_COUNTY], $[FLOOR_MAX_MO], [MAX_COUNTY], $[FLOOR_MED_MO], [AS_OF_DATE], [COMPLETENESS], and [RATE_STATUS] are filled from the State's own run of the specification on the day of signature, not from any third party's page.
• Authority. Ga. Const. Art. V, § II, ¶ I (chief executive powers) and ¶ X (information in writing from executive officers); O.C.G.A. § 45-12-72 (OPB established in the Office of the Governor; the Governor as ex officio budget director) and § 45-12-73 (planning, program budgeting, outcome measurement). Precedent for report-directing orders: EO 01.14.19.01 (Georgians First Commission) and EO 04.21.22.01 (Healthcare Workforce Commission, report due Dec 31, 2022). No Georgia executive order establishing a standing metric or dashboard was found; counsel should confirm the fit.
• No source clause. The Order deliberately contains no "obtain from any source" language. The State hosts the specification and computes the figures itself.
• Savings clause. The Commissioner of Insurance, the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire, and Georgia Access appear only in the savings clause, and only to state that the Order does not direct them.