SC health care cuts for AIDS, prescription drugs, smoking would cover court, police shortfall

SC House to consider health care cuts; help courts

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina would cut spending for cancer screening, AIDS treatment and prevention and prescription drugs to cover a shortfall in state court and police funding under a proposal House members were reviewing Wednesday.

A health care advocate said the proposal House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Cooper handed out would leave the state’s poor without critical medication, and allow deadly cancers to go undetected.

Cooper’s final tweaks pushed the state spending below $5 billion in a budget patched together with federal bailout cash. The proposal cuts $50 million from the state’s general fund budget as House members have refused to override Gov. Mark Sanford’s veto of increased fees for civil court users and won’t approve other fee increases that would keep more Highway Patrol troopers on the road.

Cooper, R-Piedmont, handed out shows at least $5.6 million cut from AIDS prevention and treatment programs; $4 million from colorectal, breast and cervical cancer screening; $1.7 million from smoking cessation; and $1 million from grants to rural hospitals.

The cancer spending reductions are shortsighted because screenings help detect deadly cancers, said Sue Berkowitz, director of the Appleseed Legal Justice Center and health care advocate.

But the largest cut fell to the Department of Social Services, which was expecting $18.4 million to cover changes made in federal welfare program funding.

Meanwhile, Cooper’s proposal would impose a limit of three prescription drugs for Medicaid patients. They currently are allowed to get at least four with up to six additional prescriptions. A hard cap of three drugs saves the state $10.7 million in the budget year that begins July 1. Seniors would lose $2.7 million in the state assistance that helps fill a gap in Medicare drug coverage.

The cuts to drug programs could force people who can’t afford the medicine or are no longer covered to decide which medications they’ll take, Berkowitz noted, sending more people to hospitals. They would have to make life-threatening choices, for instance, between blood pressure, cholesterol or diabetic treatment drugs, she said.

And the proposal closes new enrollments to Medicaid for children if their parent’s incomes are more than 150 percent of poverty beginning July 1. The proposal doesn’t remove children from the program, but it keeps the state from continuing an expansion the Legislature previously approved.

Berkowitz said that change, which saves about $1.7 million, could mean the state doesn’t maintain Medicaid programs as it had promised on a condition of getting federal bailout cash.

The proposal calls for the state’s court system to get $24.3 million cut mostly from health care programs. Meanwhile, the state Department of Public Safety picks up $22.5 and the Department of Natural Resources gains $2.7 million.

Democrats plan to offer amendments to Cooper’s proposal. They want to scale back tax breaks to pay for courts, police and health care.

For instance, state Rep. Ken Kennedy, D-Greeleyville, said he’ll push plans to raise the state’s sales tax cap on cars, planes and boats. South Carolina residents now pay no more than $300 in sales taxes on cars regardless of how expensive a vehicle is.

“Of course we have to do it,” Kennedy said, blaming the state’s financial problems on years of Republican tax cuts that have left the lawmakers unable to pay for basic state obligations. “It’s time for the Republicans to pay the piper,” he said.