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Issue: Medicaid expansion
South Carolina hasn’t expanded Medicaid. It’s one of 10 states that hasn’t done so, even though the federal government would pay for 90% of the cost, which would require states to cover the rest.
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Jermaine Johnson, Democratic nominee for governor
State Rep. Jermaine Johnson, D-Richland, has spoken in favor of expanding Medicaid in South Carolina because it would expand access to health care in the state.
“Medicaid must be expanded because we will then give 500,000 additional South Carolinians access to health care, and that is about $300 million that we are sending back to other states like this because we are one of 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid,” Johnson said to a group of University of South Carolina students.
He said the state would be able to cover the state’s share of an expansion by legalizing medical marijuana in South Carolina.
Alan Wilson, Republican nominee for governor
Attorney General Alan Wilson, the GOP nominee for governor, is not committed to expanding Medicaid, and had financial concerns about the move.
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“Medicaid sounds good on the front end, but when you realize that you’re the state is going to have to cough up the other 10% of that expansion, and that could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars is something that I’m not ready to commit to until we’ve done a further financial analysis on it,” Wilson said in an interview.
Why hasn’t South Carolina expanded Medicaid?
Gov. Henry McMaster has been against expanding Medicaid because of the additional cost to the state and efforts to do so have not moved legislatively.
However, as affordability has become a more prevalent issue, a recent poll found that 65% of South Carolina registered voters support expanding Medicaid for working adults, including 48% of Republicans.
With a new governor set to be elected in November, the opinion of the executive branch on whether to expand Medicaid could change.
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