Georgia’s legislature passed a bill guaranteeing access to activity-specific devices for state employees beginning in 2027. The bill, part of Senate Bill 503 awaiting Governor Brian Kemp’s signature, was supported by the advocacy group So Every BODY Can Move Georgia.
Kelley Berk, CPO, Shamrock Prosthetics, Georgia, and the patient advocate lead for So Every BODY Can Move Georgia, told The Georgia Recorder that the So Every BODY Can Move initiative is “fighting for basic human healthcare. Mobility is medicine.”
In 2025, Georgia implemented a law to provide health benefit policy coverage for medically necessary O&P devices, but people who were on the state’s health benefit plan were not included. The law covers up to three prosthetic devices, including two activity-specific devices per affected limb, every three years.
“It’s not fair that if I had any other job besides serving the state, I would have access to up to three devices,” Hannah Nabors told The Georgia Recorder. Nabors experienced a transtibial amputation last year following a car accident.
Representative David Clark introduced the bill to begin including state employees in 2025 and again this year, which passed the House but stalled in the Senate each time. Senator Randy Robertson also included the proposal in a bill he sponsored last year. It was then passed as part of the larger package in Senate Bill 503.
Robertson says he was inspired to take on Clark’s bill after meeting a young patient through So Every BODY Can Move Georgia who told him that the family’s insurance company denied him from receiving a shower prosthesis.
“They didn’t see showering as a health issue,” Robertson said. “It motivated me that a young boy was being denied.”
Rachael Auyer, Georgia’s co-state lead of So Every BODY Can Move, told The Georgia Recorder that the state health benefit plan and the health plan for the University System of Georgia, which covers members of the Board of Regents, was originally left out due to state budget concerns. A fiscal note initially estimated the financial impact of the proposed legislation would be $55 million before an amended projected cost of $1.5 million, based on a determination that less than 25,000 members on both the state health benefit plan and university system health plan use prosthetic or orthotic devices.
