SC Medicaid agency director is stepping down. Here’s McMaster’s pick for acting chief
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster named a temporary acting director for the state’s Medicaid agency Wednesday while the governor says he plans to work with state lawmakers and health care leaders to search for a permanent one.
McMaster named Richland County’s Thomas Clark Phillip, 70, to serve as acting director of the state’s Department of Health and Human Services.
Phillip most recently served as the department’s chief financial officer and deputy director for finance since he joined the agency in October 2019. He has 35 years of health care finance experience, the governor’s office said.
One of the state’s largest agencies, HHS as experienced turnover among top officials recently.
The governor’s appointment comes more than two weeks after he announced the resignation of Joshua Baker, who led the agency for three years. Baker’s resignation is effective Monday.
Neither McMaster or Baker’s one-page resignation letter last year said why Baker chose to resign, though Baker said the new year would be an appropriate time for a transition in leadership.
Aside from Baker, the agency also confirmed in December that HHS’ Bryan Amick, chief strategy and innovation officer, and Erin Boyce, chief of staff, were leaving the agency this month.
With vaccine distribution in sight, Baker wrote last month in his letter, “the agency in the strongest financial position it has seen in over a decade and a half, and a natural pause in initiatives following the election but prior to the start of the next General Assembly, I believe now is an appropriate time to transition leadership at the agency.”
Who the governor eventually names permanently to the position in the new year will take over a department responsible for the state’s handling of Medicaid providers and benefits for low-income South Carolinians, many of whom have come to rely on the agency in the middle of a global COVID-19 pandemic.
The governor’s office said Wednesday McMaster will work with lawmakers and leaders in health care to draft qualifications for the next permanent director.
But the new director also will have to balance the inevitable politics of the agency, often battled out in disagreements over who should receive Medicaid funds in South Carolina.
As an example, McMaster’s first term in office, the governor sought the help of the state Legislature to to defund Planned Parenthood’s two clinics in Columbia and Charleston. A year later, in 2018, the governor asked the federal government for a waiver to remove the state’s abortion clinics from South Carolina’s network of Medicaid providers, triggering a lawsuit.
The U.S. Supreme Court eventually denied McMaster’s effort in the fall.
Beyond HHS, two other state agencies lack permanent directors.
The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control — which is handling the state’s COVID-19 response — has been without a permanent director since the summer, when former chief Rick Toomey resigned for health and family reasons.
Last month, the DHEC board chose for its next director Navy officer and doctor, Edward Simmer, who most recently served as the chief medical officer and deputy director for TRICARE Health Plan at the Defense Health Agency in Washington.
The state’s Department of Public Safety also is without a permanent chief, but McMaster named acting chief Robert Woods to the job in early December.
Both will have to be confirmed by the state Senate.
This story was originally published January 6, 2021 at 12:44 PM.
