South Carolina Bill Would Outlaw Obamacare

The South Carolina House passed a bill Wednesday that would make it a crime for state officials and employers to implement the new federal health care law.

Signed into law in March 2010, Obamacare requires businesses to offer government-approved health insurance to employees who work at least 30 hours per week. A provision of the law, the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate, requires most companies to offer coverage for possible abortion-inducing drugs.

If passed, South Carolina’s Freedom of Health Care Protection Act would establish criminal penalties for those who violate it.

The state has made it very clear that is doesn’t want to go along with Obamacare, said Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a public policy research organization in Alexandria, Va. 

“They’re not setting up a state based exchange to be a funnel for federal subsidies for the Obamacare insurance,” Turner told CitizenLink. “They’re not expanding Medicaid according to the law. And then the House has basically said, ‘We are also going to try to make the implementation of this ‘null and void’ in the state of South Carolina by criminalizing anyone who tries to implement it.”