COLUMBIA--South Carolina's proposal to make major changes to its Medicaid program is confusing and complex, dividing opponents and supporters.

About 75 people attended a hearing Tuesday night, held by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It's the first of several hearings the civil rights group plans to make people aware of the changes to the state-federal health insurance program for some 850,000 poor and disabled people in South Carolina.

The NAACP has not formally accepted or rejected the plan, but South Carolina chapter president Lonnie Randolph said a decision could come in several weeks.

"It's complex and that's why we're doing this," Randolph said. "We think we can put it into layman's terms."

Blacks account for 417,400 of the state's Medicaid participants and about 240,000 of those beneficiaries are children. About 343,700 whites and 23,800 Hispanics also are on Medicaid.

"We're still early in the process," state Health and Human Services Director Robert Kerr said when asked if the agency had failed to inform the black community. "I value what they've got to say. ... It's more important that I listen to them than I speak today." Kerr will meet with House members on Wednesday.

But legislators weren't the only ones concerned.

Columbia resident Debi Hacker has a 26-year-old daughter who is a Medicaid recipient with cerebral palsy and needs a major operation in two weeks to help correct her scoliosis, a spinal condition.

"It's terrifying," she said of South Carolina's plan to give personal health accounts to most of the Medicaid recipients who would use the money to purchase private health insurance, or pay for care directly.

Hacker is worried the proposed changes wouldn't cover her daughter's upcoming health care costs.

"If she has a personal health account, I don't think it's going to cover the $50,000 worth of cumulative work that's going to be done" on her daughter, Hacker, 50, said. "There is no insurance carrier that will cover her."

But Kerr, following Republican Gov. Mark Sanford demand for change in the program, said the care Hacker's daughter is receiving wouldn't change under the new proposal.

"We've clearly got some work to do to make sure people know where we are," Kerr said. There will be no "average" amount put into the individual accounts, Kerr said. "That's where the biggest confusion is in this plan. People are assuming everybody's getting an average amount that they can ever spend."