Sens Jackson, Scott: SC missing out on incredible economic opportunity

The second open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act Marketplace recently ended and was marked with record participation from the citizens of South Carolina. The Palmetto State had the eighth largest increase of eligible residents signing up for health insurance and the nation’s 10th best percentage for eligible residents signing up, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Thanks to the tireless work of navigators and assisters in community organizations, insurance brokers and community health centers and hospitals, 210,000 South Carolinians, including nearly 43,000 in the Midlands, signed up for coverage, and their families can benefit from the preventative care and financial security of health insurance.

But while South Carolinians receiving coverage gives us reason to celebrate, we cannot ignore an equally large number of citizens who have been left out of coverage. Nearly 200,000 of our neighbors are uninsured, living in poverty and now make up a new coverage gap created by our state’s rejection of Medicaid expansion. The Midlands is home for 35,000 of them. They make less than $11,770 a year, so they do not qualify for financial assistance to purchase insurance on healthcare.gov, yet they do not qualify for our existing Medicaid program because they are not aged, blind, disabled, in very low income families or pregnant. Most of them (171,000) are working. They work in hourly or seasonal jobs and even serve us through the hospitality industry.

There are 63,000 South Carolinians between the ages of 50 and 64 in this coverage gap. Many of them have worked their entire lives but have no coverage bridge to secure them until they become eligible for Medicare at 65. There are also more than 26,700 veterans and their spouses in South Carolina’s coverage gap. And while legal immigrants living in poverty in South Carolina can access financial assistance to purchase health insurance in the marketplace, U.S. citizens living in poverty in South Carolina cannot.

Families of four making $97,000 a year qualify for financial assistance to purchase Marketplace coverage, but parents in many families living in poverty are not eligible for this financial assistance or for Medicaid because South Carolina has not yet expanded it.

Not only are citizens missing out of coverage, but South Carolina is missing out on an incredible economy opportunity. Through 2016, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the costs for coverage expansion. After 2016, the federal government will pay a little less each year but never less than 90 percent of the cost.

Researchers from the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business conducted an economic impact study and found that the more than $11 billion South Carolina would receive the first seven years of expanded Medicaid coverage would create 44,000 new jobs in the state, including more than 8,800 here in the Midlands.

It’s especially disturbing that while our state refuses to take advantage of federal funds set aside to cover our working poor, South Carolinians will continue to pay into the program to help people in other states. The McClatchy Washington Bureau estimates that non-expansion states will pay $152 billion to extend the program in other states while receiving nothing in return. Less than nothing, actually. We have lost out on $2.2 billion that should have been returned to our state —$4.7 million every day since January 2014.

That’s a heavy price to pay for a political point, but the South Carolinians who will pay the heaviest price are our working poor, who are being denied health coverage yet could qualify for help in another state. The other non-winners are insured South Carolinians, who pay the hidden tax of higher health-care costs as this population turns to emergency rooms for care.

With 29 states now expanding coverage and five other states considering it, South Carolina remains part of a shrinking minority of states rejecting our health-care dollars. But there is good news. Many conservative states like South Carolina are coming up with alternative methods to keep their health-care dollars and close the coverage gap. Four of our colleagues in the Senate, from both sides of the aisle, recently announced their intention to develop a bipartisan plan to reclaim our dollars and cover South Carolina’s working poor with private health insurance.

South Carolina cannot afford to continue to miss out on this economic opportunity. Let’s work together to create a customized coverage solution for South Carolina’s working poor.

This story was originally published May 11, 2015 at 7:47 PM with the headline "Sens Jackson, Scott: SC missing out on incredible economic opportunity."