The current Georgia health insurance commissioner is John Oxendine. He has been the Georgia health insurance commissioner since 1994, and is currently in the middle of his fourth term. Mr. Oxendine just unsuccessfully ran in the Republican primaries for governor of Georgia. The two Republican candidates that are running for the Georgia health insurance commissioners office are Maria Sheffield and Ralph T. Hudgens.
One of the main platform issues in the race for Georgia health insurance commissioner has been related to the health care reform acts mandates to states. As Georgia health insurance commissioner, John Oxendine, joined a class action lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of the health care reform acts. Also, the Georgia health insurance commissioners office opted out of setting up federally mandated health insurance exchanges, which resulted in the federal government overseeing this program themselves. This was allowed by the law. Georgia is not the only state that decided to handle the health insurance exchanges this way. Nineteen other states also stepped aside and let the federal government implement the required health insurance exchanges. The reason given for this is that the office of the Georgia health insurance commission did not believe that Georgia had the necessary finances in place to implement the program without putting other state run programs and Georgia residents, at financial risk.
