News: S.C. to Lose $807 for Rejecting Medicaid Expansion

South Carolina stands to lose $807 million in federal funds in 2022 by not expanding its Medicaid program as allowed under the Affordable Care Act, a new Commonwealth Fund analysis shows.

“The Medicaid expansion presents an opportunity for states to bring in new federal dollars, in addition to providing critical health coverage for their low-income residents,” said Fund researcher Sherry Glied of New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

“No state that declines to expand the program is going to be fiscally better off because of it,” she added. “Their tax dollars will be used to support a program from which nobody in their state will benefit.”

But South Carolina officials said it would be irresponsible to fund permanent programs with temporary dollars, and that expanding Medicaid in the state was projected to cost an additional $613 million to $1.9 billion from fiscal year 2014 to fiscal year 2020. They also said that Glied formerly worked for the Obama Administration in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The federal money for state Medicaid programs is funded by taxpayers in all states, according to Fund researchers. So residents in states that don’t expand will help fund the cost in other states without benefitting, they said.

Under the ACA, most Americans must have health insurance by 2014. People making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level were to be covered by a Medicaid expansion.

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