The South Carolina Policy Council Archive
Limited Government | Free Enterprise | Individual Liberty
In late 2020, a Senate bill (S.150) was introduced that would give South Carolinians the right to use medical cannabis to treat certain debilitating conditions, called as the “Compassionate Care…
● U.S. Supreme Court defines federal agency as “state” ● Millions will continue to be subject to individual, employer mandates ● Only one way remains to circumvent ObamaCare Last week…
THE BOTTOM LINE: WASHINGTON DOESN’T FORCE; IT BRIBES. Halbig v. Burwell, the legal case that’s now threatening to unravel ObamaCare, reaffirms this basic principle: that the federal government rarely usurps state…
WHY THE ‘PRIVATE OPTION’ ISN’T PRIVATE AND SHOULDN’T BE AN OPTION ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion destroys states’ budgets, inflicts serious economic harm, and does little or nothing to help the uninsured. Many officials in “red”…
WHAT THE BILL DOES, AND COULD, ACCOMPLISH Originally known as the “nullification” bill, H.3101 has gone through many changes since it was originally pre-filed for the 2013 legislative session.…
WHERE’S THE MONEY GOING? HOW MUCH? WHAT FOR? The federal health care law known as “ObamaCare” gets more unpopular every week, but the question for citizens and policymakers is…
WHAT COMES AFTER THE WELFARE STATE? Today the welfare state is omnipresent in every part of the United States. The federal budget is dominated by entitlement spending, with 45 percent…
YOUNG AND HEALTHY? BE READY TO PAY UP. Now that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is actually being implemented, many Americans are not pleased with the law. One population of…
HOW TO STOP FEDERAL COERCION – INCLUDING OBAMACARE – AND ENACT FREE MARKET REFORM [PDF of full report here; a briefer version of the report here.] For three years, policy…
WONDER WHAT YOUR LAWMAKERS WERE UP TO IN 2013? IT’S ALL HERE. Our annual guide to the year’s legislative session, The Best & Worst of the General Assembly, has been…
A PERNICIOUS BARRIER TO HEALTH CARE FREEDOM HAS COME DOWN. IT SHOULD STAY THAT WAY. Last Wednesday, South Carolina House lawmakers – possibly accidentally – enacted the most pro-liberty reform…
THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT IS ABOUT TO BE A BIG PART OF YOUR WORLD The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, has already begun to take…
MANY SOUTH CAROLINA POLITICIANS HAVE SPOKEN OUT STRONGLY AGAINST OBAMACARE. THEIR ACTIONS TELL A DIFFERENT STORY. In March, Governor Nikki Haley publicly stated that “as long as [she is] the…
A SNAPSHOT OF WHERE WE ARE Obamacare by Another Means While the governor and Speaker of the House are promoting what they call an “alternative” to Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid,…
THE HOUSE GOP ‘ALTERNATIVE’ TO OBAMACARE AND THE WINNERS & LOSERS OF SOUTH CAROLINA’S HEALTH CARE DEBATE We recently reported that House Republicans introduced an alternative plan to ObamaCare in a…
“ALTERNATIVE” TO GOVERNMENT SPENDING PLAN TURNS OUT TO BE LESS AMBITIOUS GOVERNMENT SPENDING PLAN. IS THERE A PLAN C? Yesterday the House Republican Caucus met with reporters about a…
INCREASED FEDERAL HANDOUTS AS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT … HAVEN’T WE TRIED THAT BEFORE? Through the heated national and state debates over health care policy and the implementation of the Affordable…
WHY DO HOSPITALS WANT TO EXPAND MEDICAID? (HINT: IT’S NOT BECAUSE THEY’RE JUST NICE PEOPLE) Hospitals in South Carolina, both individually and under the auspices of the South Carolina Hospital…
HOW THE STATES CAN DO MORE THAN YOU THINK . . . As the 120th session of the South Carolina General Assembly kicks off, the decisions to implement (or not implement)…
WHAT ARE SOUTH CAROLINA’S OPTIONS? Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (widely known as Obamacare) and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that the law is constitutional, there has…
THE PROBLEM: The new federal health care takeover will add trillions to the nation’s debt, raise taxes by $669 billion, heap burdensome regulations on South Carolina businesses, and spark sharp…
UNFORTUNATELY, THE LATTER State legislators eager to escape Obamacare’s restrictive mandates have united behind the interstate healthcare compact, a single piece of state legislation they expect to free them from…
Can South Carolina set up its own independent, free market version of a federal “health exchange”? Don’t be fooled.
The South Carolina Health Care Planning Committee continues to meet, but whether it’s accomplishing anything is open to question.
When Congress originally passed the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” the plan was for the federal government to set up a national “health exchange” – a single government-run “market”…
A vast number of new federal healthcare regulations are introduced in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), most of which will be enforced through state or federally run…
In a recent piece on Slate.com, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer calls a pair of South Carolina politicians “hypocritical” for, on the one hand, criticizing Obamacare's individual health insurance…
What’s the Committee doing? Over the last few months (check out our video coverage), we’ve watched a roomful of policymakers and health care officials struggle to come to grips with…
The federal government has given states a choice: either create a “health exchange” to comply with the new federal health care law, or the feds will do it themselves. The…
A list of free-market alternatives to the creation of a state-based health care exchange – a major component of the federal government’s takeover of the health insurance market.