SC Senate Rejects Medicaid Expansion

On Tuesday, the South Carolina Senate rejected the expansion of Medicaid in the state. The vote was 23-19, mostly along party lines. The only two Republicans who voted in favor of the expansion were Ray Cleary and Paul Campbell of Georgetown and Berkeley Counties, respectively. Cleary is a dentist.

Senators debated for approximately three hours, in spirited fashion at times. Democrats, as they had done earlier this session, called for a temporary expansion of Medicaid, allowing it for a year at no cost to taxpayers, with no guarantee that would continue. But Republicans said that kind of uncertainty would not be good for a recovering state economy.

The debate became the most heated when Democrats suggested that those who were voting against the expansion were doing so for partisan reasons. 

Sen. Nikki Setzler of Lexington Co. was one of several Democrats who argued for expansion on moral grounds. Sen. Tom Davis, a Republican from Beaufort Co. disputed that line of criticism, ""I'm not going to concede the moral high ground on this debate. It's not compassionate to...raise taxes."

After the Supreme Court upheld much of Obamacare last June, it gave states the option of opting out of the plan. Now, that the Senate has chosen to do that, the money allotted to South Carolina for Medicaid expansion will be dispersed among states who accepted it.

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