The Charleston City Paper Editorial Board
More than 300,000 hard-working and mostly voiceless South Carolinians are not being served by our state’s leaders. They are, in fact, being ignored, year after year, because state Republicans won’t accept available federal money to expand Medicaid coverage.
Doing so would be a tacit acceptance of something they’ve long hated — President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which included a provision to help states provide health coverage to low-income Americans by expanding the federal Medicaid program. For 10 years, the GOP has resisted taking federal aid for South Carolina that is being steered to other states because of our own recalcitrance — even though the feds would pay 100% of the costs for three years and 90% after that.
Shame on you, South Carolina. Accepting federal Medicaid expansion money would open up vital health care coverage — which would lower costs for other people and infuse cash into rural hospitals, among other things — for 300,000 people in our state. To turn away is to fail too many voters and citizens who may not look like those in power who control the state’s purse strings.
Gov. Henry McMaster again rejected the possibility of Medicaid expansion with his veto pen earlier in the month when he axed a health care policy study committee from the state budget.
The sad thing is that Medicaid expansion could work here in big ways, as shown by our friendly neighbors in North Carolina. Last year, they woke up to accept the federal money. How did they pass it in a legislature that’s just as conservative as South Carolina’s? Through real bipartisan leadership and coalitions of nonprofits, businesses and other supporters.
Moderate N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, explained to Charleston City Paper bureau chief Jack O’Toole how the proposal moved ahead in the Tarheel State:
“We built a non-traditional coalition of advocates, including Republican county commissioners who wanted to keep rural hospitals open, law enforcement leaders who knew their officers and jails were spending too much time with people who needed health care and not handcuffs, business leaders who knew private insurance premiums are lower when medical providers have less indigent care and more.”
The results? Already “transformative,” Cooper said.
“Medicaid expansion is changing lives across North Carolina. Nearly 500,000 people have enrolled in quality, affordable health care in the seven months since Medicaid expansion went live,” he said. “That is transformative for hard-working families, our economy, our rural health care system and the fight against the opioid crisis.”
North Carolina is getting healthier by accepting a lot of free money from the federal government. Why can’t South Carolina politicians see that’s a smart play here, too? Wake up.
Charleston City Paper is an award-winning weekly newspaper in Charleston, S.C.
