Message to feds--ball's in your court

So it’s unofficially official.

South Carolina will have a health insurance exchange run by the federal government starting January 2014. Yesterday, Governor Haley’s administration re-confirmed that our state would not ask the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for additional money to plan for setting up an insurance exchange. That is the path all other states intending to operate their own exchanges are taking.

While the official word on letting the feds do it has not been made, it was very clear at the 3+ hour meeting of Gov. Haley’s SC Health Planning Committee yesterday that there was no interest in even discussing an exchange. The Gov. set up the Committee by Executive Order back in March in response to legislation introduced in the House to create a South Carolina exchange (that bill is stalled in committee). A $1 million federal grant from HHS for the purpose of studying the feasibility of a state exchange is paying for the work of the Committee.

The word “exchange” was ever barely mentioned during yesterday’s meeting and only probably twice in passing. It was clear that the mission of the Committee was not to decide if our state should set up an exchange but to discuss ways of reducing health care costs. Of course this is an excellent topic but hardly what the feds gave us the grant to do.

So what started out as Governor Haley’s insistence that South Carolina would figure out how to get out from under the Affordable Care Act by setting up our own version of an exchange (to meet President Obama’s criteria), now looks like a decision to just let the feds do it. The eventual official announcement will be played down and the rational will be why spend the time and effort with long-term financial responsibility to do something that the feds are willing to do for us for free.

That is a very logical, practical and honorable decision to make—and the right decision for us, especially for the health care consumers.

But it also means that South Carolina is ending its pipedream of setting itself free of the Affordable Care Act, which will not be ruled unconstitutional by the Courts.

Mark Sanford: The Faux Small Business Governor

When Mark Sanford ran the first time for Governor, he promised to be the best friend of small business. Everything was about how he was going to help small business in this state grow and prosper.

We at the Small Business Chamber tried to work with his office for several years. But it always was Sanford’s way to help small business or nothing. And of course Sanford’s idea of helping small business turned out to be the same plan he gave for solving all problems—cut state spending and give him more authority over all state agencies.

As you can read in my blog about my friend Tim Wilkes, Sanford has never been about getting something done to help small business unless his big ideas got done first. When we were lobbying hard to pass an increase in the cigarette tax to give premium assistance to small businesses offering health insurance to low-income workers, Sanford went a different direction. He got a bill passed that he loudly proclaimed would help small business better afford health insurance. At the time I predicted that the plan was doomed to fail. Today not one business in this state has ever benefitted from Mark Sanford’s “health care reform”.

Now the latest in the Sanford small business “I’m here to help” folklore. He has vetoed the entire budget of the S.C. Small Business Development Center. Not just a decrease….the whole $523,121 budget.

Why? Because he claims that the SBDC does exactly the same things as the S.C. Department of Commerce.

Has the Governor ever met his Department of Commerce? They don’t do small business development. Never have in the entire history of the agency. They concentrate on big business recruitment, expansion and retention. Nothing wrong with that.

But the Department of Commerce doesn’t have offices around the state providing consultation to the would-be entrepreneur or help to a small business person figuring out how to survive a recession. They don’t teach how to do a business plan or help a small business find a government contract. That’s what the SBDC does.

All the SBDC success stories in 2009 of creating jobs and financing pale in comparison to one Boeing landed by Commerce. But the SBDC successes are day after day, not once every 20 years. And as I mentioned in my last blog, 64% of all the net new jobs created nationwide in the last 15 years came from small businesses.

For all Mark Sanford’s years’ of talk about small businesses being the backbone of our economy, he has never once put his money where his mouth is. Vetoing the SBDC budget is just more proof.

Override!!!!!