Latest news with #SkylarLaird
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Ohio lawmakers join on letter supporting Planned Parenthood, resisting funding cuts from Congress
A volunteer clinic escort holds a sign outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbia, South Carolina, on Friday, March 28. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette) More than a dozen members of Ohio's state legislature signed on to a letter with 500 other lawmakers across the nation asking Congress to push back against efforts to reduce or eliminate budget funding that would go to Planned Parenthood health clinics. The letter, sent to U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate and House Minority Leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, lays out support of Planned Parenthood specifically as a provider for 2 million patients per year of 'essential, preventive, reproductive health care,' according to the letter. 'We write in support of the millions of patients who rely on Planned Parenthood health centers,' the letter states. ''Defunding' Planned Parenthood blocks patients from getting the care they need and increases health care costs for everyone.' The letter, organized by the State Innovation Exchange's Reproductive Freedom Leadership Council, comes as congressional budget reconciliation is ongoing, when U.S. legislators decide the funding priorities for the country, under which the Trump administration has attempted to push cuts to areas such as health care. This includes funding to Medicaid, the program that provides health care and services to low-income households, covering things like health screenings and vaccines. U.S. House panel passes GOP plan that cuts Medicaid by $625B, adds work requirement The state budget also stands to cut Medicaid funding, in a way that's triggered by changes to funding at the federal level. The House proposal of the state operating budget would eliminate Group VIII, the state's Medicaid expansion group, if federal funding for Medicaid dips below 90%. That would leave nearly 770,000 without medical coverage, forcing them to seek other options, like emergency rooms, for care, or even skip or delay care all together. In the letter, the lawmakers state that a majority of Planned Parenthood patients 'rely on Medicaid and other federal and state programs to access care,' and that 64% of the organization's health centers are in rural of 'medically underserved' communities. 'Without Planned Parenthood, many patients would have nowhere to turn for care,' according to the legislators. Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio has reported 43% of their patients are covered by Medicaid. Cuts are causing concern for many of the leaders of the organization's regional arms, who are stressing the effects that funding cuts could have not only on abortion services, but also infant mortality and maternal mortality programs, and health care overall. 'The reality is that stripping Medicaid reimbursements from providers who also provide abortion will do very little to stop abortion services,' said Nan Whaley, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region, in a statement on Tuesday. 'Medicaid does not fund abortion care. What it will impact is access to critical preventive services like birth control, cancer screenings, wellness exams, STI testing and treatment, and more, leaving millions of folks in need and at risk.' Cuts on the federal side also include freezes to Title X funding, which is federal funding historically directed at clinics who 'have played a critical role in ensuring access to a broad range of family planning and preventive health services,' according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. The Trump administration has frozen $65 million in grants to 'family planning services' clinics in April as they look to broad cuts to federal spending overall. In Ohio, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio received $1.98 million in grants in 2024 from the Title X pot. The Ohio Department of Health also received grant funding, obtaining $7 million that year. The department received similar amounts in the previous two years of grant funding as well. The state legislators who signed on to the letter were: Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood House Minority Leader Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington Sen. Willis Blackshear, Jr., D-Dayton Rep. Juanita Brent, D-Cleveland Rep. Darnell Brewer, D-Cleveland Rep. Beryl Brown Piccolantonio, D-Gahanna Rep. Karen Brownlee, D-Symmes Twp. Rep. Christine Cockley, D-Columbus Sen. Bill DeMora, D-Columbus Rep. Michele Grim, D-Toledo Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson, D-Toledo Rep. Dontavius Jarrells, D-Columbus Rep. Lauren McNally, D-Youngstown Rep. Tristan Rader, D-Lakewood Sen. Kent Smith, D-Euclid Rep. Anita Somani, D-Dublin Rep. Eric Synenberg, D-Beachwood Sen. Casey Weinstein, D-Hudson SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Activists' push for near-total abortion ban leads to split among SC Republicans
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways Two spines sit in the Statehouse on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, before activists with Students for Life Action planned to bring them to representatives' offices. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette) COLUMBIA — The 'inflammatory tactics' by an anti-abortion group demanding a near-total ban in South Carolina prompted most members of the Legislature's Family Caucus to leave the group and rebuke its GOP leader. A resignation letter Wednesday to Rep. John McCravy, the caucus' leader, was co-signed by 29 of its 48 House members. The mass departure came soon after McCravy, whose official caucus title is moderator, stood at the Statehouse with members of the activist group whose tactics included going to the churches of GOP leaders and putting fliers on windshields asking churchgoers to tell their fellow congregant 'Act NOW. Don't Let Any More Preborn Babies Die!' At a news conference Wednesday, the next-to-last day of the 2025 legislation session, members of Students for Life Action showed reporters the two plastic spines they planned to deliver to House Speaker Murrell Smith and Judiciary Chairman Weston Newton, telling them to 'grow a spine' and bring up McCravy's bill for a vote. The proposal, similar to previous bills McCravy has introduced that failed in the Senate, would ban nearly all abortions from the onset of pregnancy, with no exceptions for victims of rape or fatal fetal anomalies. 'Chief among our concerns is your continued refusal to condemn the deeply troubling behavior of out-of-state, third-party groups that have descended upon South Carolina churches to provoke and disrupt worship services,' reads the resignation letter to McCravy, provided to reporters. (Students for Life Action is a Virginia-based group with members in South Carolina.) It comes a week after Majority Leader Davey Hiott, R-Pickens, confirmed he left the group he co-founded in 2017 with McCravy. Beyond differences in opinion over how to proceed with the abortion ban, Hiott accused McCravy of making homophobic and antisemitic comments about fellow legislators, which the Greenwood Republican vehemently denied. Wednesday's letter made no mention of those comments. Rep. John McCravy, R-Greenwood, talks during a Students For Life Action news conference pushing for a near-total abortion ban on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette) The Family Caucus, which McCravy called 'the conscience of the Republican Party,' functions as a support group of sorts for socially conservative Christians interested in promoting issues that support children and families, Rep. Richie Yow, R-Chesterfield, told reporters. That used to include members of the agenda-setting House Republican Caucus and the hardline Freedom Caucus, as well as a single Democrat. The archconservative Freedom Caucus didn't join the mass resignation, instead jumping to McCravy's defense. McCravy has not left the majority Republican Caucus, and the Freedom Caucus has not asked him to join them, he told reporters Wednesday. Abortion Yow, a Baptist pastor, said what the activists did is not OK, no matter what the issue. 'Their harassment of churchgoers — on Palm Sunday, no less — crosses a moral line,' read the letter to McCravy. 'Your silence as the moderator of this caucus, along with your continued support and engagement with the groups that employ those tactics, is unacceptable.' Their fliers claimed Smith and Newton were holding up McCravy's near-total abortion ban. The activist group also sent text messages and bought advertisements targeting the legislative leaders, a spokeswoman said. If the group's tactics were aggressive, they were justified to push for what they see as right, said Kristan Hawkins, the organization's president. 'I think educating citizens in a House member's district about what he's really doing in Columbia is actually our job,' Hawkins told the SC Daily Gazette. 'That's our job as human rights activists.' Members of House leadership, including Hiott, repeatedly asked McCravy to step in and ask the group to stop. McCravy refused, he said. 'I don't think that's appropriate,' McCravy told the Gazette. 'I think that's unethical.' He declined to say whether he thought visiting representatives' churches crossed a line. 'College students are going to be more enthusiastic than probably older people like me,' McCravy said. 'I don't want to dampen that enthusiasm.' House leaders said they aren't opposed to McCravy's bill, which received three hours of testimony but no vote during a subcommittee meeting earlier this year. Smith and Hiott are co-sponsors with McCravy. Newton is not. Previous attempts by the House to pass near-total abortion bans have failed repeatedly in the Senate, so leaders decided to avoid the lengthy debate until the legislation has a better chance in the upper chamber, Newton told the Gazette. Plus, there are still lawsuits pending on South Carolina's existing six-week ban, including a challenge before the state Supreme Court on whether the language in the law — which does not actually give a number of weeks — means the ban should start at nine weeks instead. Amid the March 4 hearing on McCravy's bill, Hiott put out a statement urging fellow representatives to press pause until the state Supreme Court rules. But McCravy believes the House should have passed the bill anyway. 'If you give up just because you hear a rumor that somebody might not do something, you're never going to win,' McCravy said Wednesday. 'So, we don't give up.' The group's tactics aren't new, though they're newly against House Republicans. In 2023, members of Students For Life Action delivered smaller spines to the five female senators who helped defeat McCravy's proposals of a near-total ban following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. That delivery backfired, as the women took the Senate podium to proudly display proof of having a backbone and refused to back down. What ultimately became law in 2023, over the objections of the women who dubbed themselves Sister Senators, was a ban at six weeks, with exceptions for victims of rape or incest and fatal fetal anomalies. The three GOP female senators lost their re-election bids last year. Hawkins, head of the activist group, said the larger spines for Smith and Newton were to help them 'grow up a little bit.' 'These spineless, feckless attacks against John McCravy, against pro-life students in South Carolina — it's beyond the pale,' Hawkins said Wednesday. One of the fliers advocacy group Students for Life Action distributed, including at churches. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette) But Newton said the group hasn't affected him one way or the other. The lobbying clearly didn't cause him to bring up the bill in the session's waning days. Nor has it made him less inclined to start the debate, he said. He told the Gazette he considers it more of a distraction from legislating. Comments about other legislators Hiott told The Post and Courier he resigned his membership partly over McCravy's offensive comments about two fellow legislators. Hiott declined to comment further to the Gazette. The alleged comments date back to last session, when Hiott claimed McCravy complained to him and other House leaders that Newton, a Bluffton Republican, appointed a 'gay' and a 'Jew' to serve as subcommittee chairs on the House Judiciary Committee. The comments could only be referring to then-Rep. Jason Elliott, the Legislature's first — and still only — openly gay member of the Legislature and now a state senator; and Rep. Beth Bernstein, the state's only Jewish legislator. Newton told the Gazette that McCravy repeated his comments about Elliott directly to him, telling the chairman he 'didn't want to serve on a subcommittee with that gay.' Elliott, R-Greenville, did not respond to requests for comment from the Gazette. Bernstein, D-Columbia, said she heard about the remarks secondhand several times. McCravy said he has good relationships with both Bernstein and Elliott and wouldn't disparage them in any way. 'I would never refuse to serve on a committee because of someone's characteristics or preferences,' McCravy told the Gazette. He did have private conversations questioning Newton's decision to make Elliott and Bernstein subcommittee chairs because of disagreements over policy issues, he said. 'I don't have anything against either of those people personally in any way,' McCravy said. Friction on the Judiciary Committee dates back to the end of last year, when McCravy asked to be removed from the powerful committee that vets many of the bills on the Family Caucus' priority list. He denied that his request had anything to do with his fellow committee members, instead citing disagreements with Newton over policy. The two have publicly butted heads over proposals about betting and alcohol sales. McCravy is a staunch gambling opponent who doesn't imbibe. Newton, on the other hand, is a co-sponsor this year of legislation legalizing a casino off Interstate 95 in Orangeburg County. The bill advanced through his committee to the House floor last week. On Wednesday, the House voted to 'continue' the bill, meaning it can't be taken up again until 2026. Other measures the two have publicly disagreed about include bills to create a legal way to bet on horse races, allow people to drink cocktails anywhere in an airport terminal, and enable people order alcohol for delivery to their homes. But Newton said it was McCravy's claims that the chairman was funded by alcohol lobbyists, followed by the comments about Elliot, that 'led to this unraveling.' Wednesday's letter, however, cited none of that. Instead, it said the caucus has become the antithesis of what it's supposed to be while bringing the unwanted divisions of Washington, D.C., to the South Carolina Statehouse. 'We believe this is both unwise and spiritually corrosive,' it read. South Carolina House of Representatives
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Top business prize for Gazette's senior reporter among outlet's 5 awards in SC contest
The South Carolina Daily Gazette staff consists of Editor Seanna Adcox and reporters Skylar Laird, Shaun Chornobroff and Jessica Holdman, as seen on the Statehouse steps in Columbia on Thursday, March 13, 2025. (Photo by William Meacham/Special to the SC Daily Gazette) COLUMBIA — SC Daily Gazette senior reporter Jessica Holdman took top honors for business journalism at the South Carolina Press Association's annual awards ceremony Friday. Her awards were among five total won by the Gazette in its inaugural year. The nonprofit news outlet competed in Division A, the category for the state's largest daily newspapers. That means the Gazette was competing against colleagues with The Post and Courier, The State, and the Greenville News. Holdman won the Ken Baldwin Award for Excellence in Business Journalism for all daily news outlets in South Carolina as well as first place in business beat reporting for Division A. Reporter Skylar Laird received two Division A awards: second place in breaking news reporting and third place in education beat reporting. And contributing columnist Paul Hyde won second place for column writing. The annual contest awarded the state's best in journalism — including articles, photos, columns, editorials, and page layouts — published between mid-November 2023 and mid-November 2024. For the Gazette, however, entries covered the six months since it became a press association member. Winners of most categories were declared weeks ahead of the event. But the Ken Baldwin Award was among contests unannounced until the presentation Friday at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. The award, sponsored by the University of South Carolina's journalism school, is named in memory of Kenneth W. Baldwin Jr., a USC graduate and benefactor of financial journalism education. The former business editor died in 2022 at age 96. Contest judges said Holdman 'examined business and economic development matters broadly, including their history and possible future impact. 'Her reporting covers everything from the emerging issues related to lithium battery manufacturing to the future of South Carolina's once-dominating textile industry,' they wrote in explaining their choice. 'Her work is very well done and well-researched. But most of all her stories are interesting, appealing not only to business 'readers' but everyone.' The Baldwin award came with a $500 prize. Holdman's winning entries for her first-place business beat award included reports on emergency responders' preparations for lithium fires, the transformation of the state's textile industry, and a real estate developer's lucrative leasing arrangement with the state. Laird's award for breaking news involved her reporting on the Medical University of South Carolina's decision to end all gender-transition treatments — which provided answers to readers that MUSC hadn't provided its own patients at the time and ahead of other outlets — and the scrambling of LGBTQ advocates to connect patients with care elsewhere. Her award for education reporting involved students enrolled for state-paid K-12 scholarships in the program's first year, parents left in limbo after the state Supreme Court declared the private tuition payments illegal, and a surprisingly high number of 3- and 4-year-olds suspended from South Carolina preschools. In opinion writing, Hyde's winning columns advocated closing the 'Charleston loophole' as a memorial to the nine victims gunned down in a Charleston church in 2015, examined the legacy of the 1934 Bloody Thursday massacre of striking mill workers in Honea Path, and emphasized the importance of voting in state and local elections. What is the SC Daily Gazette? A free, online news outlet on a mission. The SC Daily Gazette launched on Nov. 14, 2023, as the 37th affiliate of States Newsroom, the nation's largest state-focused nonprofit news organization. It is an ad-free, online news outlet supported by grants and donations. The four-person newsroom consists of three founding staffers — Editor Seanna Adcox, Holdman, and Laird — and reporter Shaun Chornobroff, who joined in January. Our mission is to cover state government and officials and how their decisions affect people across the Palmetto State — and to provide that coverage for free to both readers and other news outlets to republish. While the Gazette doesn't print a newspaper, it offers a free subscription to emailed newsletters that arrive in inboxes six mornings a week. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
5 years after reopening with a new mission, SC agriculture school is beyond capacity
Cows at the Governor's School for Agriculture on Feb. 21, 2025. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette) McCORMICK — Cows compose the greeting committee at the Governor's School for Agriculture, flocking to the fence just past the entrance to watch visitors drive past. Established in 1797 as a farming school for poor and orphaned children, the campus known for centuries as John de la Howe has changed missions several times. The latest turned it into the nation's only residential public high school providing an agricultural education. Pastures of horses, sheep and cows dot the 1,310-acre property tucked off a rural road in McCormick County inside a national forest. The campus' dozen residential halls are full, and for the first time since the new mission began, officials are having to turn away prospective students because of a lack of space, said Tim Keown, the school's president. Two more halls sit mostly empty as they await decorations from the school's alumni committee and, next year, a new batch of students to fill them. After a rocky start, including findings of ethical and financial mismanagement during the school's first year after the change, things are looking up, Keown said. Last year, the school regained the accreditation it lost in 2016. And for the first time in 25 years, auditors last year found no problems, a rare accomplishment for a state agency, he said. Driving through the expansive campus, where classrooms abut greenhouses and open pastures, Keown described a vision for the school's future, including continuing to expand its capacity and offering more classes to cover the full spectrum of agriculture. His ideas have gotten support from the House of Representatives' budget writers. That chamber's state spending plan for 2025-26, passed last week, includes $2 million for continuing renovations and $4 million for a new meat processing plant. 'We don't expect (students) to all go back and be full-time farmers,' Keown said. 'But there are hundreds of thousands of jobs across South Carolina that need young people to enter those jobs.' The mission adopted in 2020 is a return to the school's roots. Dr. John de la Howe, a French doctor who immigrated to Charleston in 1764, wrote in his will that he wanted the farm he had purchased to be an agricultural seminary for '12 poor boys and 12 poor girls,' giving preference to orphans, Keown said. For years, that was what the school was. During World War I, John de la Howe became a state agency and a home for orphaned children, which it remained until the 1980s. Then, as orphanages waned in use, its purpose adjusted again to become a public residential school for sixth- through 10-graders with serious behavior problems. That, too, fell out of favor over the years, as more counties established programs that kept troubled teens closer to home. Attendance dropped, and costs per students skyrocketed. In 2003, then-Gov. Mark Sanford recommended, without success, closing the school and sending its students to a military-like public school in West Columbia for at-risk teens. In 2014, Gov. Nikki Haley recommended putting the Department of Juvenile Justice in charge. In March 2016, with the school's accreditation on probation, House budget writers recommended temporarily transferring oversight to Clemson University. Weeks later, the state Department of Education made a final decision to yank the school's accreditation. Deficiencies cited by inspectors included classes taught by uncertified teachers, the school not meeting the needs of students with disabilities, and the lack of online access. That forced the Legislature to make a decision. Legislators eventually settled on creating a third residential high school offering a specific education. The agriculture school joined existing governor's schools for the arts and for science and math. The year the school was supposed to open its doors to its first new class of students, the COVID-19 pandemic began. Distancing restrictions meant students could no longer share rooms, so the school halved its capacity and began its first year with 33 students. The next year, the school's population doubled. At the start of the 2024 school year, 81 students were enrolled, and another 81 had graduated. Once renovations in three dorms are complete, the capacity will increase to 124, plus day students, Keown said. 'It's been like putting together a huge puzzle with many missing pieces over the last couple of years,' Keown said. 'But we're finally finding all those pieces, and it's all making more sense.' Blake Arias knew he wanted to study plants. Other than that, he had little interest in agriculture when he applied for the governor's school. 'If you looked at my application, it was very obvious that I didn't have a background and that I didn't know much,' Arias said. When he first arrived at the school nearly three hours from his home in Summerton, he wasn't particularly interested in handling animals. And he really, really didn't want to learn to weld. Three years later, Arias, who graduates this spring, still focuses primarily on plants. However, he also spends hours every day after class helping a rabbit, Chunky, lose some weight before he takes her to shows. He's working on earning a beekeeping certification. And he even learned how to weld. 'Am I the best welder? Absolutely not,' Arias said. 'But I really enjoyed it, and it taught me something new because they gave me the opportunity.' Arias is part of about half of the school's population that comes in with little background in agriculture, Keown said. Applicants must have at least a 2.7 GPA. The goal is to take all kinds of students, whether they grew up on a farm or in a city and show them all sorts of opportunities in agriculture. That's not limited to farming. The school offers four designated pathways: agricultural mechanics, horticulture, plant and animal systems, and environmental and natural resources. Students choose a focus, but they're introduced to a sampler platter of what's out there, Keown said. 'It really shows you all the possibilities that there are in each field,' said Emily White, a senior from McCormick. The days typically begin long before students report to the cafeteria at 7:45 a.m. Like on any farm, horses, pigs and rabbits need feeding and cleaning, and plants need tending. Students take a blend of core classes, such as English, math and social studies, and classes focused on agriculture, Keown said. Even the core classes, which are all honors-level courses, typically use agriculture as a touch point for students, said Lyle Fulmer, a recent graduate. Math problems, for instance, might use real-life examples of balancing a budget on a farm. For students interested in agriculture, that adds excitement to what might usually be their hum-drum classes, he said. 'Even if it was frustrating and I didn't know how to solve the problem, I would work through it and I would know that this was something that I very well could be doing someday,' said Fulmer, who is now a freshman at Clemson University. Once classes are over, students have the rest of the afternoon to do as they please. White said she typically goes to the pig barn to clean, feed and work with Hank the Tank, a pig she's planning to show. Other students might practice rodeo riding or clay shooting, two of the sports the school offers. Some gather at the saw mill to help process trees salvaged when Tropical Storm Helene swept through campus last September. By 6:15 p.m., students are expected to return to their residence halls or other communal areas for an hour of study time. Like college students, they have the run of their residence halls under the watchful eye of a residential advisor. Along with accumulating credits to get ahead in college courses, the freedom Fulmer had as a high school student helped prepare him for living in the dorms and all the challenges that accompany that. He already knew how to keep his space tidy and handle disagreements with roommates, which many incoming freshmen don't, he said. 'It really did prepare me a lot for college,' Fulmer said. Standing on the front lawn of the president's mansion, glimpses of the dining hall visible across an expansive open lawn, Keown described his vision of the school's future. In the next couple of years, the school will start offering classes in culinary arts and hospitality management, which will help students who want to go into the growing industry of agritourism that creates attractions out of farms. 'Our ag kids learn to grow (the food), our culinary students prepare it, our tourism hospitality students manage the banquets,' Keown said of his vision. Also in the near future is the meat processing plant, which Keown hopes to have finished in the next three years. That will give students skills to land high-paying jobs straight out of high school and fill a gap in the agricultural industry, Keown said. A decade from now, Keown hopes to see 300 students roaming the grounds. He also wants them to grow about half of what they eat, compared with 20% now. In Keown's mind, the school presents a bright spot for the future of agriculture. While the number of farmers under the age of 35 has grown slightly in recent years, the average age of farmers is 58, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture. Photos of recent alumni hung from flagpoles on campus. Driving under them, Keown named each graduate and where they went to school. Many go to Clemson, though some went to schools in other states. Most are still pursuing degrees in agriculture. 'They are making us really proud,' Keown said.
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump is right: Don't touch Medicaid for vulnerable South Carolinians
Republicans in the U.S. House voted this month to cut $880 billion over 10 years from programs overseen by the chamber's Energy and Commerce Committee, which include Medicaid. President Donald Trump has pledged not to touch the health care benefits. (Stock photo via Getty Images) President Donald Trump is right: Congress should not touch Medicaid. The federal/state health insurance program for the poor and disabled provides coverage for 1.1 million South Carolina children and adults. Medicaid covers about 60% of all births and 63% of all nursing-home patients in South Carolina. Unfortunately, Medicaid is on the chopping block. On Feb. 13, the U.S. House Budget Committee voted to seek at least $880 billion in cuts from programs under the purview of the chamber's Energy and Commerce Committee, which include health care coverage. Critics warn such deep cuts aren't possible without slashing Medicaid. That'll hit South Carolina hard. In 2022, Medicaid spending totaled $8.9 billion in South Carolina, according to KFF, a health policy research organization. Federal funding accounted for $6.7 billion of that figure — or 75.4% of overall Medicaid spending. Any federal Medicaid cut is not only going to potentially deprive low-income South Carolinians of health-care coverage but it's going to hurt the state's economy as well. Republicans want to slash Medicaid for the poor to pay for tax cuts that overwhelming benefit the wealthy. Let's be clear about this: Congress and state leaders should be building up Medicaid in South Carolina, not tearing it down. It's long past time that we do right by our most vulnerable South Carolinians. The problem in South Carolina is not that too many people have health insurance. The opposite is true: We have one of the highest uninsured rates in the nation, according to KFF. Since March 2023 when COVID-era Medicaid initiatives ended, our state has taken 443,933 South Carolinians off the Medicaid rolls, according to KFF. An estimated 521,660 South Carolinians under age 65 lack health insurance, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In other words, about 9% of our S.C. population is uninsured compared to the 3% uninsured rate in a state like Massachusetts. We rarely stop to ask South Carolina's elected officials why, under their leadership, our state ranks so far below most other states in the nation in so many categories of well-being, including health care coverage. Perhaps it's time we started asking. One reason South Carolina has so many uninsured people is because our state remains one of only 10 states in the nation that stubbornly refuses to expand Medicaid eligibility. That could draw down billions in federal funds to provide health care coverage for an additional 360,000 low-income South Carolinians, according to reporting by the SC Daily Gazette's Skylar Laird. By not expanding Medicaid, South Carolina has rejected $17.6 billion in federal funds in the past 10 years. That would not only help struggling South Carolinians obtain health insurance but it would provide a substantial economic boost to our state. Our state's refusal to expand Medicaid coverage may explain why South Carolina has the nation's third-highest rate of medical debt in collection, according to the Urban Institute. Struggling South Carolinians have found a perhaps unexpected ally in President Trump. Medicaid, he said, should be off the table. 'Medicare, Medicaid — none of that stuff is going to be touched,' Trump said in an interview with Sean Hannity last week. 'We won't have to.' Trump told Fox News that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are 'going to be strengthened.' It may be difficult to think of Trump as the protector of Medicaid, but he committed to it, and he should be taken seriously. It's true, however, that Trump sent mixed messages a day later by also endorsing the House budget plan which could do exactly what he said it shouldn't — cut Medicaid. Even as Republicans on the federal level plan to gut Medicaid, we're seeing some hopeful developments in South Carolina. Gov. Henry McMaster recently asked federal officials to allow the state to expand Medicaid eligibility for poor parents who are working or going to school. That's a step in the right direction, although it doesn't go far enough. Some South Carolina lawmakers last year expressed interest in at least exploring the possibility of expanding Medicaid up to 138% of the federal poverty level. The failed proposal would have been the first serious effort among S.C. lawmakers in at least 10 years to think about the money lost and lives blighted by their misguided refusal to follow the lead of the 40 other states that have expanded Medicaid. Nationwide, Medicaid provides health care for more than 70 million Americans, including more than 30 million children, 8 million seniors, and 10 million adults with disabilities. Medicaid also supports more than three of every five nursing home residents. Cutting Medicaid could severely impact all states, but especially relatively poor and rural states like South Carolina. Congress and state leaders should heed Trump's words on Medicaid: Don't cut it. Strengthen it.
