Why are health care costs in Georgia soaring and why are so many Georgians dependent on PeachCare? This link at WalMartWatch will take you to a detailed report on the burdens that Wal-Mart is imposing on the public treasury in Georgia and elsewhere. More Wal-Mart employees in Georgia have family members receiving publicly-assisted health benefits than any of the other 16 states surveyed. 

These facts about the sorry record of Georgia's single largest employer explain the reasons for our health care crisis much better than the temporary problems created by an influx of illegal immigrants. Of course, Wal-Mart and other businesses created the illegal immigrant problem itself with their reckless disregard of the public's interest in order to inflate their profits on the back of cheap immigrant labor. Which makes it curiouser and curiouser for Georgia's political leaders to provide more and more tax benefits to "attract" businesses to Georgia—to engage in the same flim-flam of claiming to contribute net benefits to Georgia's economy while saddling the Georgia taxpayer with the costs of their employees' health care and the costs of the influx of all those immigrants—not just the costs of health care, but of schools, sprawl, traffic, crime, etc., etc., etc., which leads to more tax burdens at the same time we are cutting taxes to attract businesses! 

This circular pattern of pandering to irresponsible companies seems more likely to lead to spiraling economic ruin than to economic progress. In fact, I would predict that these policies so far would lead to a state that is at or near the bottom of the barrel in terms of its educational system, its per-capita income (especially when adjusted for outside-the-Perimeter-Road), its child care*, its health care system, its rates of obesity, its life-expectancy, and its transportation mess in urban areas. 

*According to the Kids Count Data Book, which recently released its 2005 report, Georgia ranks 39th among states in the safety, health, and education of its children. It remains among the worst in infant mortality, babies with low birth weights, and teen birth rates, according to the national ranking.