At issue are tax credits that lowered the cost of ACA plans that are set to expire Dec. 31. The credits were enacted as part of a Covid relief package in 2021. Unless Congress takes action to extend the credits, premiums for Georgians will, on average, more than double, a recent Georgia Health Initiative analysis found.

The enrollment deadline is Monday, Dec. 15, for coverage to begin Jan. 1.

The GHI analysis predicts that the higher costs would prompt about 340,000 of the 1.5 million Georgians who are enrolled in the ACA to go without insurance next year. The analysis is based on data showing how many people enrolled after the premium tax credits took effect.

Congress is set to recess for the holidays next week. On Thursday, a Democratic proposal to extend the subsidies and a Republican proposal to provide enrollees with additional funds for health care costs instead both failed on 51-48 votes in the U.S. Senate.

The exact amount of the rate increases will vary based on several factors, but on average, premiums in Georgia will more than double, from an average of $69 per month this year to $148 per month in 2026, according to the GHI report.

Many will likely “buy down” to lower-coverage plans that may have lower premiums, but higher out-of-pocket costs, the analysis said.

How will higher costs impact health care in Georgia?

People who make more than 400% of the poverty level (about $62,600 for a single person, or $128,600 for a family of four) will see the biggest increases if Congress doesn’t act, said Louise Norris, health policy analyst for Healthinsurance.org.

“All of a sudden they’re faced with full-price premiums, which are really high, depending on how old you are, and where you live,” Norris said. People making less than 400% of the federal poverty level will also see increases, she said.

Many people will opt to go without insurance, which will increase health care costs across the board, Norris said.

Employer-sponsored plans and Medicare plans have also set higher premiums for next year.

“When you increase the uninsured rate, you do drive up costs for everyone who still has insurance,” Norris said.

Anna Adams, senior vice president of government relations at the Georgia Hospital Association, said, “Hospitals will continue to provide high-quality care to all patients, regardless of their ability to pay, but the loss of coverage for many of those patients will have a substantial impact on hospitals’ ability to stretch already scarce resources.”

Many patients without insurance will turn to emergency room care, Norris said, for which they won’t be able to pay. That will cause hospitals to raise rates, which will drive up premiums for everyone.

Who is eligible for Affordable Care Act insurance and where to find plans in Ga.

U.S. citizens, nationals, or lawfully present immigrants who are not incarcerated can enroll in the plans. About 1.5 million Georgians, or around 13% of the population, currently use the plans.

Most of those enrolled do not have access to insurance through their employers.

To compare plans and enroll, visit GeorgiaAccess.gov. In the past, Georgians purchased their insurance through a federal website called the Marketplace. The state established its own portal last year.

What happens if Congress doesn’t extend the tax credits by the Monday deadline?

The rates listed on GeorgiaAccess are the rates that will take effect if Congress does not act, Norris said. She advises selecting a plan by Monday’s deadline.

“You can base your decision on those numbers. Pick a plan, but then don’t just tune out completely. Make sure you still keep an ear to whether or not anything is changing,” she said.

Congress could still renew the subsidies or agree to another plan to lower costs even after the deadline, retroactively.

What happens if you miss the Monday deadline to enroll?

Those who have health insurance through Georgia Access will be re-enrolled in the same plan or the most similar plan available for next year.

Aetna will not be offering ACA insurance in 2026, so those customers will be shifted to another company, said Bryce Rawson, a spokesperson for the Georgia Office of Insurance and Safety Fire.

Those who don’t already have health insurance and miss the Monday deadline can enroll until Jan. 15. But coverage wouldn’t start until Feb. 1.

What options are available for those who cannot afford health insurance?

Here are some resources available in Georgia for uninsured people.

• Many charity and low-cost clinics across the state operate on a sliding scale for low-income and uninsured people. Here are some directories to help find one near you.
• For DeKalb and Fulton residents, Grady Health offers financial assistance, often called a “Grady card,” for inpatient and outpatient care. For residents of other counties, Grady provides financial assistance for emergency services.
• Contact your health system or doctor and explain the situation. Hospitals are often able to write off debt, provide lower bills, or set up a payment plan. Just ask.
• Make sure you are being charged the lower “self-pay” rate rather than the insurance rate.
• Local public health departments offer an array of low-cost services, including vaccinations, many routine screenings like mammograms, and sexually transmitted infection prevention and treatment services.
• Eligibility for Medicaid varies. Typically, people who are eligible for the ACA are not eligible for Medicaid. Those who are eligible include:
• Children from low-income families
• Adults 19-64 with incomes up to 100% of the federal poverty level ($15,650) who work, volunteer, study, caregive or complete another qualifying activity for 80 hours per month.
• People with certain medical conditions or who are aged, blind, or disabled.
• Pregnant and post-partum women with low incomes.
• Parents of children under age 19 who earn very low incomes

Healthbeat is a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published by Civic News Company and KFF Health News. Sign up for their newsletters here.

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Spoiler Alert: “Heated Rivalry” is not about hockey.

The new limited series, produced for the Canadian streaming service Crave and available in the U.S. on HBO Max, may look from its marketing like a show about hockey. It definitely contains a lot of scenes involving hockey – being played, being watched, being talked about – and the story is surrounded by hockey; its two main characters are professional hockey players, and their competition as opposing hockey champions (the “rivalry” of the title) is a major factor that moves the plot.

Even so, if you’re a hockey fan who knows nothing about it, and you stumble across it while looking for something to watch, be warned before you press “play” that you are probably in for a big surprise.

Adapted from “Game Changers,” a popular book series by Canadian author Rachel Reid, the show follows the two above-mentioned hockey pros – Canadian Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Russian Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), each of whom is a star player for their respective team – as they compete against each other with puffed-up “alpha” swagger, on the ice and in the media. When the skates (and cameras) are off, however, there’s a different story going on. Despite the jocular animosity of their public relationship, there’s something else brewing between them in private, and it comes to a head when a commercial shoot leads to an unexpected rendezvous in a hotel room.

Well, unexpected for them, at least. We in the audience have seen it coming since that first smoldering glance across the rink.

From there, “Heated Rivalries” continues over a course of years as the two secret lovers use every match, tournament, or Winter Olympics where they compete against each other as an opportunity for more rendezvous in more hotel rooms. But while their meetings may be all about a release of pent-up passion, the bond between them is based on something more. In the high-stakes world of professional hockey, there’s not much they can do about that – publicly, at least – without killing their careers; in Ilya’s case, as a Russian citizen and the son of a prominent government official, the situation carries the potential for even graver consequences. 

That’s just at the end of the first two episodes, though. The show, which drops an episode weekly through December, leaves us hanging there to explore the story of another hockey player, Scott (François Arnaud), teammate and best friend to Shane, who becomes entangled with smoothie barista Kip (Robbie G.K.) in a whole secret gay life of his own.

If you’re thinking that the idea of a gay love story between two butch hockey players is a preposterous premise for romance fiction, think again – or at least redefine your idea of “preposterous.” It’s a genre that has exploded in popularity among a surprisingly large demographic of romance literature fans who also love hockey, combining the thrill of forbidden love with the drama and excitement of their favorite sport to catapult numerous writers, including Reid, onto the bestseller lists, which was surely a factor in the choice to translate her “Games Changers” books to the screen, courtesy of the show’s queer creator/writer/director Jacob Tierney.

The latter (also co-creator of “Letterkenny,” another popular and queer-friendly Canadian show with a strong hockey presence) delivers it with all the glossy, high-charged passion one would expect – and more – from a romance about world-class athletes in love. Set within the rarified world of wealth and privilege that is professional sports, the drama takes place against a backdrop of packed arenas, awards ceremonies, elegant fundraisers, and luxury hotels, where the protagonists must play at being enemies while secretly planning their next hook-up with each other.

Which brings us to the thing that really makes “Heated Rivalry” the buzziest queer show of late 2025: the sex. The show takes full advantage of its story’s obvious sex appeal – as well as its leading actors’ sculpted, athletic bodies – to serve up some of the hottest onscreen trysts in gay TV memory. Though they stop just short of being “explicit,” they’re the kind of sex scenes that push the limits of “softcore” right to the edge and make sure we know exactly what’s happening, even if we can’t see the details. Tierney turns those steamy private meetings between Shane and Ilya into set pieces and centers entire episodes around them, because he knows they’re what the audience is there for. Like we said, this is not really a show about hockey.

That said, it’s not really just a story about sex, either. In between those steamy scenes of athletic carnality, there’s a lot of percolating emotion happening – and thanks to the exquisitely tuned performances of Williams and Storrie, whose electric chemistry doesn’t just spark during their lovemaking scenes, but crackles through their every moment together on screen, it all comes across with elegant clarity. Shane and Ilya may want each other’s bodies, but there’s something more they want, too. There’s a tenderness in the way they look at each other, even when they’re smack-talking on the rink, and it infuses their scenes of passion, too, which arguably makes them even more blistering hot. More than that, it calls to us with its fond familiarity; it’s that heady feeling to which most of us, if we’re lucky, can relate, a sense of yearning, of needing another person so keenly that it feels like a physical sensation. In other words, it feels like being in love.

Of course there’s another layer too, which hangs over everything and ultimately fuels all the conflict in the plot: the pervasive homophobia that exists in professional sports, creating an atmosphere in which players are pressured to present nothing but a masculine, definitively “straight” image and any hint of non-heterosexual leanings is enough to destroy a career. That’s not a situation limited only to pro athletes, of course; many of us in the wider world also face the same dilemma, which is why we can all relate to this aspect of their love story, too.

Still, it would be misleading to say that “Heated Rivalry” is really about social commentary either, though it certainly brings those issues into the mix. With only half the six-episode season released so far, it’s hard to draw a certain conclusion, but what stands out most about the series so far is the way it captures the palpable joy of being in love – and yes, that includes the joy of expressing that love physically. These joys come with pain, too, when they can only be shared in secret, and it’s that obstacle that Shane and Ilya – and apparently, with the side trip of episode three, Scott and Kip as well – must find a way to overcome if they want their real yearning to be fulfilled.

For now, we’ll have to wait to find out if they can all make it. In the meantime, you know we’ll all be watching each new installment with our full attention, waiting to see what happens during Shane and Ilya’s next match-up.

And no, we’re not talking about hockey.

The post ‘Heated Rivalry’ is the gay hockey romance you didn’t know you needed appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta.

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What remains

Dec. 10 — On Saturday, I attended a special screening of the film “Fairyland,” based on Alysia Abbott’s memoir about her late father, Atlanta activist and writer Steve Abbott. The poignant film was followed by a discussion with LGBTQ+ activists who knew Abbott or lived in Atlanta during the early days of the gay rights movement. There was also a tribute to historian and activist Dave Hayward, who passed away while organizing the screening. See my full recap of the event here. 

And now a few headlines:

A federal judge struck down Georgia’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender prisoners in state custody, but the state is appealing the decision.

 Athens Pride and Queer Collective successfully defended itself in court from a lawsuit filed by Julie Mauck, a realtor and chair of the Oconee County chapter of Moms for Liberty, who claimed she lost her job due to “cancel culture.” 

Jon Dean, the owner of Lore on Edgewood Avenue in Atlanta, says the LGBTQ+ nightclub is “barely getting by” due to a lack of patronage and neglect by the city along the nightlife corridor. 

Former Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine’s name was replaced with her deadname on a display that honors previous officeholders at the Department of Health and Human Services. Levine was the first trans person confirmed by the U.S. Senate. 

Speaking at the International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference last week, former President Joe Biden urged LGBTQ+ people to “get up and fight back” against the Trump administration. He also criticized the GOP for turning transgender rights into a “political football.”

Atlanta Pride and Out on Film have announced the five recipients for the 2025 Reel Resistance Fellowship.

Savannah Pride Center is holding a fundraiser for the organization through Jan. 1.

It’s tough outside, but it’s love in here…
Collin

Cheshire Motor Inn and the vanishing map of queer desire

Atlanta-born artist, curator, and writer Ed Woodham has crafted a beautiful elegy for the now shuttered Cheshire Motor Inn.

The motel became a hookup and gay cruising spot in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. “It was a waystation, a pickup point, a sexual playground, a refuge for men who needed an hour, a night, or a weekend to be fully themselves,” Woodham writes. 

“As the country again flirts with authoritarianism, as queer people are told – subtly or overtly – to behave, assimilate, and quiet down, the erasure of our erotic and communal landmarks is a warning.”

 Read Ed Woodham’s full essay and see more photos here.

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Violations issued to officer over interaction with trans woman at Tucker library

The DeKalb County Internal Affairs Unit has completed its investigation into an incident involving a DeKalb police officer and a trans woman at a library in Tucker. 

Sasha Swinson (pictured) said she was misgendered and verbally accosted by DeKalb Officer GA Weaver, who was on duty at the library for early voting. 

Weaver was issued violations regarding professional image, body-worn camera, off-duty employment, and duty to read/understand/comply with orders, according to a memo.

 “I’m not sure exactly what practical effects this will have, but it is certainly good news,” Swinson said.

 Read the full update here.

Original musical ‘Mamma Dearest: Here We Joan Again’ opens at Out Front

“Mamma Dearest: Here We Joan Again,” created by playwright and drag performer Blake “Tugboat” Fountain, opens Dec. 11 at Out Front Theatre.

Fountain describes the show as an ABBA-inspired holiday comedy that combines the musical “Mamma Mia!” and the 1981 cult film “Mommie Dearest” about Joan Crawford and her adopted daughter, Christina.

The musical follows Christina as she tries to uncover the identity of her birth mother, who might be Hollywood legends Bette Davis, Judy Garland, or Eartha Kitt, by inviting them all over for a “holiday meltdown of epic proportions.” 

 Find out more about the show from Fountain here.

Best Bets

 The Virginia-Highland Winterfest & Tour of Homes returns Dec. 13 with the annual Jingle Jog, parade, gift market, and more. The Tour of Homes will run both Dec. 13-14 and include 10 homes decked out for the holidays.

 The Grant Park Candlelight Tour of Homes is Saturday, Dec. 13, from 6 to 10 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 14, from 5 to 9 p.m., and will feature 10 homes plus an artist market. 

The Atlanta Women’s Chorus will hold its “Seasons of Light” concert on Dec. 13 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. at Church at Ponce and Highland,1085 Ponce De Leon Ave NE.

Atlanta playwright Topher Payne’s “Y’allmark” draws on his experience writing holiday movies for the Hallmark Channel to create this stage play, featuring some of the same beloved tropes, plus star turns by Amber Nash and Kevin Gillese. Dec. 11-28 at 7 Stages in Little Five Points.

 Be sure to check out our IG stories @thegeorgiavoice for even more events.

The post 🧳 Cheshire Motor Inn checks out appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta.

In a Facebook post on Dec. 2, Dean urged the LGBTQ+ community to support the club amid what he described as a lack of support from the City of Atlanta for Lore and other Edgewood establishments like Pisces, Sister Louisa’s, and Joystick.

“We do not live in a city that is friendly to small businesses, and especially nightlife,” he wrote. “The City of Atlanta and the Mayor’s nightlife division has all but abandoned Edgewood and scapegoated the bars for all of the problems that persist outside our doors, down the street, after operating hours. Instead of working with us on solutions to improve our historic neighborhood, we have been harassed and ignored at every turn.”

Related story: Lore brings unpretentious queer fun to Edgewood Avenue

The City did not respond to Georgia Voice’s request for comment.

Dean cited “disheartening” feedback from friends and colleagues about the lack of parking, the prices, and, from gay men, the amount of women in the club, and said there is plenty of free street parking and a “wide range” of drink prices. He added that LORE is “never going to be” the bar to cater to only one type of queer clientele.

“I understand that many of us are struggling financially right now and aren’t in a place to support ANY nightlife,” he said. “But for those who can afford to go out once or twice a week, please please consider stopping by LORE… Peoples [sic] perception of how well a project or venue is doing does not always match reality. We have so much programming and exciting events going on to draw people in, but we NEED more regulars.”

Nightlife has played a critical role in LGBTQ+ history, serving as safe spaces for the community when it was more dangerous to be openly queer in public. Atlanta, however, has lost many of its historic spaces over the years, like Backstreet and Hoedowns. And with only a few remaining – most of which specifically cater to gay men – Dean says the queer space Lore creates is critical.

“Queer bars should be for everyone! We love being a place where different people can gather, party and build community together,” he said. “…We are not perfect and still have a lot of work to do, but we made a lot of sacrifices to create a Queer space that was uncompromising in values and vision. Even if we crash and burn, I do not regret fighting for this.”

Dean urges patrons to share their feedback and help Lore grow by taking a customer satisfaction survey. Take the survey here. To learn more about Lore and buy tickets to upcoming events, visit loreatl.com.

Related story: Queer Atlantans are fostering alternative nightlife with DIY parties, raves, and events

The post LGBTQ+ nightclub Lore is ‘barely getting by,’ says owner appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta.

The closing of the Cheshire Motor Inn on Cheshire Bridge Road hit me with a grief I didn’t fully anticipate. It felt like losing a relative no one ever talked about, but everyone secretly loved, one who held family history in the wrinkles of its sheets and the creak of its floorboards.

As an Atlanta native, I grew up with Cheshire Bridge Road as a living, breathing entity, a stretch of the city that embodied the raw, unfiltered sensuality and liberation that gay men carved out for themselves long before apps, curated nightlife, and rainbow marketing campaigns claimed to stand in for queer community. But the Cheshire Motor Inn was something else entirely. It was a sexual commons, a makeshift temple of longing, a sanctuary where desire could unfold without apology.

Cheshire Bridge Road in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s was notorious and beloved in equal measure. It was Atlanta’s great erotic artery, a place where the boundaries between nightlife, underground culture, and queer self-determination collapsed into one brightly lit, neon-humming ecosystem. Every disco, leather bar, strip club, adult bookstore, every drag bar, every massage parlor, every parked car holding two (or more) men negotiating possibility under the glow of a streetlamp – together they formed a kind of erotic democracy.

Cheshire Bridge was where you learned to recognize and accept desire in the brief flick of an eye, where the coded rituals of cruising were passed down with the precision of “oral” history. As one longtime local put it in the press, Cheshire Bridge was a place where “you can get the best Italian food in the city. You can get [oral sex]. You can buy a dildo. It’s all right there.” It was an ecosystem that existed outside respectability politics, unapologetic and deeply queer.

Within that landscape, the Cheshire Motor Inn became legendary. Built in the late 1950s, the motel was unremarkable in architecture yet extraordinary in cultural function. It was a waystation, a pickup point, a sexual playground, a refuge for men who needed an hour, a night, or a weekend to be fully themselves.

Reviewers online unintentionally preserve what queer oral history often loses: men mentioning the “classic ‘50s look,” the friendly if bemused accepting staff, the rooms that smelled of urine, time and secrets, and in more candid cruising forums, the glow of possibility—“lots of cruising here,” “stairwells are active after midnight,” “Room 115 was friendly,” “met a beautiful married guy here once who changed my life,” “weekend nights are good if you know how to read the signs.” Even the reviews that griped about dilapidation, police presence, or slow nights reveal the deeper truth: this wasn’t just a motel – it was a vessel of intimacy, a queer social network long before such things had digital interfaces.

For me, Cheshire Motor Inn was woven into the fabric of my coming-of-age as a gay man growing up in the conservative oppressive heat of Georgia. It was a place where I had several memorable encounters, moments that helped me understand my own body and desire(s) not as something to fear or conceal but as something alive, tender, electric, and human.

I remember the scuffed carpet, the smell of air-conditioning fighting Atlanta’s summer heat, the roaches, muffled laughter (and screams) from another room, the dirt, the phone that didn’t work, the way the metal railing outside the upstairs rooms vibrated slightly if someone walked by. These sensory fragments form a personal archive: the nervous excitement of waiting for a knock; the shock of instant attraction; the tenderness that sometimes followed; the silence afterward that felt neither lonely nor sad but deeply human.

That personal history inspired me in 2023 to host the Cheshire Motor Inn Biennale in Room 153 – a one-room fearless festival of memory, performance, and reckoning. It was my way of reclaiming and honoring the motel while it still stood, paying homage to the generations of queer men who had passed through those doors. I filled the space with art, stories, and rituals. It became a temporary queer reliquary, an altar to the courage, risk, pleasure, and defiance that had perfumed that room and others for decades. Motel management (wisely) shut it down. But it didn’t stop it from happening. The Cheshire Motor Inn Biennale in Room 153 continued online – inviting everyone virtually into that space, to feel its history and its ghosts. It was a pure reminder that queer sanctuaries don’t need official recognition to matter deeply.

The loss of Cheshire Motor Inn echoes the heartbreak many of us felt when the Parliament House in Orlando closed – a queer palace of drag, decadence, resilience, and weekend-long romance. The Parliament House wasn’t just a hotel or a bar; much like Cheshire, it was a mythical cultural anchor, a place where generations of gay men learned how to belong to themselves and to each other. These fabled venues were not mere businesses; they were queer universities, erotic cathedrals, social laboratories where shame dissolved and identity was forged. Losing them is not the same as losing any other bar or motel. It is losing a location on the emotional map of queer history.

What disturbs me most is that these closures are not isolated events but part of a larger pattern. In a time when queer visibility is paradoxically at a cultural high and political low – when rainbow capitalism thrives even as extremist rhetoric, anti-LGBTQIA legislation, and creeping fascist ideologies spread – the disappearance of queer spaces is deeply symbolic. It signals both an external and internal erosion: the external pressure of gentrification, over-policing, and moral sanitation, and the internal pressure of a culture increasingly encouraged to tidy itself up, to align with heteronormative relatability rather than daring, erotic self-invention.

Neighborhoods across the country are being “cleaned up,” which often means sanitized of the messy, vibrant, sexually liberated queer culture that actually saved lives. Under the guise of progress, developers flatten the architecture of our history. Places like Cheshire Motor Inn – unglamorous, uncurated, and imperfect is especially vulnerable. Yet they were essential: they gave us privacy when we needed it, visibility when we craved it, danger when it was thrilling, comfort when it was scarce and deserved.

So, when I think about the Cheshire Motor Inn now, I feel both sorrow and gratitude. Sorrow for the physical loss, for the soon to be bulldozed rooms and extinguished neon. But gratitude for what it gave us – for the men who found each other there, for the lives changed by a single night, for the bodies that learned how to want without shame, for the art and memory and laughter that soaked into the drywall and carpet (among other things). These things cannot be torn down. They live on in us.

And this is why we must record them. Celebrate them. Write them into our cultural memory. Because what Cheshire Bridge Road represented cannot be replicated by curated pop-up queer events or corporate Pride floats. It was dirtier, truer, riskier, freer. It was ours.

As the country again flirts with authoritarianism, as queer people are told – subtly or overtly – to behave, assimilate, and quiet down, the erasure of our erotic and communal landmarks is a warning. These places mattered. They shaped us. And their disappearance marks not just the loss of architecture, but the loss of a world where queer freedom felt insurgent and alive. We must be proud.

Farewell, Cheshire Motor Inn. Farewell to your flickering neon sign, your uneven stairwells, your rooms full of stories. You gave shelter to our desires when few places would. And in return, we carry you forward – not as a ruin, but as a forever heartfelt pulse.

You will not be erased. We will not be erased.

Editor’s Note: Located behind The Colonnade restaurant, Cheshire Motor Inn closed in October after more than 70 years in business. The future of the property, owned by development firm Selig Enterprises, is unknown at this time.

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