Under the state Medicaid program, South Carolina gives about $375 million of federal and state funds to hospitals that treat a high number of Medicaid patients. Public hospitals involved in the sharing program contribute to the state's pool of cash that is used to secure roughly $262 million in matching federal money.
However, new federal proposals could redefine the meaning of what is a public hospital, preventing some hospitals from contributing to the state coffers. It could place financial burdens on the state to find revenue and hospitals that heavily depend on the money and possibly prevent Medicaid patients from receiving care.
Sanford and members of the congressional delegation, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., said they received assurances from Dennis Smith, the state operations director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, that South Carolina would not lose funds for the program for fiscal year 2004.
"If they implemented what they had proposed it would have been a budget deficit in South Carolina," Graham said in his office after the meeting. "That's not going to happen."
Graham, along with Wilson, Reps. J. Gresham Barrett, R-S.C., John Spratt Jr., D-S.C., and Jim DeMint, R-S.C., attended the hour-long meeting. Representatives from the office of Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., and Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., also attended the meeting, which was held at the request of South Carolina officials.
The state's Medicaid program serves more than 800,000 poor, disabled and elderly state residents. Many of the state's 65 hospitals depend on the Medicaid funds that "keep some hospital doors open," according to Jim Head of the South Carolina Hospital Association.
Graham said South Carolina officials will challenge the federal findings that some hospitals are not public hospitals.
However, the delegation did not get a concrete guarantee from officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a federal agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, that the state would not lose any funding in the fiscal year 2005 budget.
But S.C. Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, said he was optimistic.
"I came out of this meeting very, very encouraged that they're going to allow us to have the money for the budget year July '04-June '05 that we've had before," Leatherman said.