SC Democrats urge Republicans to expand Medicaid with help of new federal stimulus law

South Carolina Senate Democrats aimed Tuesday to put pressure on Gov. Henry McMaster and Republicans who control the state Legislature to expand Medicaid and put more and low-income South Carolinians on the health insurance rolls.

“We’re one of only a dozen states in the country who have chosen not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, denying thousands, really hundreds of thousands, of South Carolinians access to health care,” said Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg. “We have been under a series of Republican governors, who have chosen not to expand Medicaid at the expense of the health and well being of the citizens of South Carolina and to the detriment of billions of dollars that would pour into our health care system, helping many rural hospitals along the way.”

But Republican leaders and the governor are not budging.

Now signed by President Joe Biden, the federal stimulus law — known as the American Rescue Plan that sent checks to millions of Americans because of the COVID-19 pandemic — included in it a measure giving states, mostly in the South, the opportunity and the money attached to expand Medicaid coverage.

South Carolina’s Republican governors have refused over the years to expand Medicaid under former President Barack Obama’s health care law and legislative efforts to put the expansion question on the general election ballot have gone nowhere.

McMaster, a Columbia Republican, has reiterated his position that the state doesn’t plan to take advantage of the measure.

“Gov. McMaster isn’t for sale, regardless of whatever ill-conceived ‘incentives’ congressional Democrats may come up with,” spokesman Brian Symmes said in a statement provided to The Associated Press. “What the federal spending plan does is attempt to offer a short term solution for a long term problem.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.