Could SC’s health agency merger bill be revived, or will it have to wait until 2025?

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCSC) - A major bill to restructure South Carolina’s public health delivery system, which was found to be the most fractured in the nation, died for the year on the one-yard line at the State House last month.

The bill has broad bipartisan support, and now, some of the most powerful voices at the State House are calling on the legislature to resurrect it when lawmakers return to Columbia, as soon as Wednesday.

“We cannot wait another day,” Gov. Henry McMaster told reporters May 29.

In the last few weeks, McMaster has made this same entreaty to lawmakers over and over, urging them to get the health agency restructuring bill to him as soon as possible.

“There’s not going to be a better time to take a big step than right now,” the governor said May 23.

The bipartisan bill, S.915, would merge six separate state agencies into one, a new “Executive Office of Health and Policy.”

This office would merge the existing Departments of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services, Disabilities and Special Needs, Health and Human Services, Mental Health, and Aging, plus the new Department of Public Health that will be created July 1, when the Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) splits.

Under the bill, a new Secretary of Health and Policy would lead the new agency. That person would be a member of the governor’s cabinet and appointed by the governor, with senators’ approval.

The idea aims to streamline services and improve South Carolinians’ health outcomes.

“Often people who need help go from one place to the other to the other, and they feel like they’re on a merry-go-round or a revolving door. They never get anywhere,” McMaster said of the existing system.

The bill overwhelmingly passed both chambers of the legislature but died on the final day of the legislative session on a procedural move in the House from the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, which argued its concerns with the legislation had not been taken seriously.

The process to allow lawmakers to now even consider S.915 at any point for rest of this year is complicated.

Every year, when the General Assembly adjourns its legislative session in May, it approves an agreement, called the sine die resolution, that outlines the reasons for which lawmakers can be called back to Columbia, like finalizing the budget.

If a bill is not included in that resolution, they cannot take it up until the next legislative session begins in January.

So McMaster and a number of lawmakers want them to amend the resolution while they are sporadically in a special session throughout June to add the restructuring bill and then take it up.

“I agree with the governor that it’s very important,” Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R – Edgefield, said. “Very candidly, it’s going to be a big lift.”

Once the resolution has been approved and is in effect, as it is now, lawmakers have to clear a higher threshold to amend it, a two-thirds vote of all members present in both chambers.

If it is opened, there would likely be pushes to attach other currently dead bills to the agreement as well.

In the Senate, the Republican majority is likely to need some Democratic support to reach the threshold, which opens up the potential for Democrats to try to leverage that into forcing the Senate to add on and take up a bill a number of Republican senators don’t want to debate: the hate crimes bill.

“That’s a deal killer,” Massey, who personally opposes the legislation to establish a state hate crimes law, said.

Massey said in his nearly two decades in the legislature, this agreement has only been changed twice after its initial approval: once, to sign off on the economic development deal that brought Boeing to South Carolina, and the other, to remove the Confederate flag from State House grounds.

“That doesn’t happen all that often, and the times when it has happened have been very significant events for the state as a whole,” he said.

Massey said that is not to say this bill is insignificant for South Carolinians.

But whether the support is there to try to finalize it this year or be forced to wait until 2025 to get it to the governor, remains to be seen.

“I would say at this point, it’s still a longshot,” Massey said. “But there are a number of us who realize this is important, and we need to try to make an effort to get it done if we can.”

Lawmakers can attempt to amend the resolution as soon as Wednesday when they will be back in Columbia for the day to elect the state’s next Supreme Court justice.

But they can also try later in the month when they are scheduled to be in session for other matters.

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