The Sun News (Myrtle Beach, S.C.), Issac Bailey column

Sept. 06--Gov. Nikki Haley's definition of smart, fiscal conservatism:

Ignore an opportunity that could create tens of thousands of jobs, return to the state more than 15 dollars for every dollar invested, and pay billions of dollars to help residents of other states while denying that benefit to South Carolinians.

That's what Haley has been arguing for years while denying a Medicaid expansion through the Affordable Care Act. She also sabotaged efforts to create a health insurance exchange that uses the power of private-sector competition to make plans more affordable, the kind of economic principle Haley claims to be in favor of -- unless her political prospects get in the way.

We've known for awhile that South Carolina's decision to play politics with poor people's lives was wrong-headed. But this past week, just how bad that decision will prove to be over the next decade was made plain like it had not been before.

According to a McClatchy analysis of data from the nonpartisan Urban Institute research center, the Medicaid expansion would cost the state about $1.2 billion over the next decade. Haley and others, such as state Rep. Tracy Edge and just about every elected Republican, love to tout that cost, claiming we can't afford it.

But they never get around to mentioning that spending $1.2 billion would bring in almost $16 billion. And they don't want voters to know that because we are turning down that nearly $16 billion, state taxpayers are now forced to help finance the expansions going on elsewhere -- to the tune of $3 billion. (The numbers are even starker for North Carolina. The Tar Heel state is turning down almost $40 billion and will pay $10 billion to finance other states' Medicaid expansion.)

That's right. Haley's vision for one of the poorest states in the nation is to refuse $16 billion while paying to bring more health insurance to residents of rich states like dreaded, ultra-liberal, hedonistic California, as well as Illinois, and Hawaii, which produced freedom-hating President Barack Obama.

But there's more! Haley also believes passing on the economic activity that would come with that $16 billion -- and the 44,000 jobs a study by the University of South Carolina says it would produce -- makes fiscal sense, too, because maybe we have too many jobs in South Carolina? Maybe we should send some of our jobs over to California the way Haley is sending $3 billion state taxpayers are forking over. That's essentially what's happening any way.

By Haley's calculations, we probably don't need the rural hospitals that are also being squeezed by her decision. It's not like we have a lot of sick and poverty-stricken people who rely upon them.

And please -- please -- don't tell anyone the governor has been busy bragging about the jobs created by Boeing after the state invested more than a billion dollars to get that manufacturer to build planes in North Charleston.

Investing money in a company that relies upon the government dole more than most while denying health insurance to poor state residents who can barely afford to shop at Wal-Mart is becoming a hallmark of the Haley era, one that should neither be ignored nor forgotten come November or when the history books are written.

Haley is also proudly pro-life, but that didn't stop her from refusing resources that could literally save lives -- the number of which depends on which study you believe the most, but maybe 50,000 Americans die annually for lack of health insurance -- as well as helping to further push down the teen pregnancy and abortion rates, which are at all-time lows primarily because of government funded-programs and increased contraception use.

Try not to laugh, but the Haley administration argues that it is finding other ways to reach poor people and that it is their fiscal conservatism, not naked political calculation, which has convinced it to deny the Medicaid expansion.

A growing number of red states are accepting the expansion money while shaping the health care program in a more conservative way, being innovative for the long-term while serving as many of their poor residents as possible in the short-term.

Haley and the GOP-dominated General Assembly could choose to do the same.

But they won't. They'd rather throw South Carolina taxpayer dollars -- and jobs -- away.

Contact Issac Bailey at [email protected] or @TSN_IssacBailey.

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