If you’re working poor in South Carolina, but still can’t afford health insurance, the state has decided you’re “paying the price,” the third-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives said in recent social media post.
House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn took South Carolina to task on Twitter earlier this week for being one of 12 states refusing Medicaid expansion.
“Out of 50 states in the Union, only 12 have refused to expand Medicaid. South Carolina is one of them,” Clyburn tweeted July 12. “Now the most vulnerable members of our community are paying the price.”
His Twitter post came almost two weeks after the Associated Press reported on Clyburn’s push for Medicaid expansion as part of his series of “Help is Here” town halls during the first half of July.
“All of us are aware of how catastrophic COVID-19 has been to rural and low-income communities,” Clyburn said in the AP’s July 1 report. “And what we have seen in the Biden administration is a very comprehensive program to build back better.”
Clyburn, a retired teacher, has represented the 6th congressional district, which includes majority-Black precincts in and around Columbia, Charleston, Beaufort, and nearly all of South Carolina’s “Black Belt” since 1993. He is dean of the state’s congressional delegation and he has, for the most part, been since 2011 the only Democrat in South Carolina’s congressional delegation.
Medicaid enrollments shot up nationwide during the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, even in South Carolina, where enrollments are comparatively low but still quite a sizable lot. Enrollments went up 8% in the state to 1 million enrollees, and now almost one in five South Carolinians are on Medicaid, the Post and Courier said in a June 28 news story.
Nationwide, more than 2 million make up the “coverage gap,” because they don’t qualify for Medicaid but still make too little to qualify for subsidized health plans under the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges, according to an Alabama NPR news story earlier this month.
This is especially true in states, such as South Carolina, that have declined to fill that gap by expanding Medicaid.
According to The Economist, the U.S. is the only developed nation without universal health care.
