By Jack O’Toole
Guest Commentary
A government program that more than 600,000 South Carolinians rely on for health insurance remains at the center of the federal shutdown that began Oct. 1. It shows no signs of being resolved soon.
Driving the fight is a battle over enhanced federal health care subsidies, first implemented during the pandemic. The aid helps 24 million middle- and lowerincome Americans to afford private health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare as it’s widely known.
Congressional Democrats say they won’t go along with any plan to reopen the government that doesn’t reverse earlier GOP legislation that ended the enhanced subsidies — threatening 17 million ACA participants with triple-digit rate hikes heading into 2026.
Under the GOP plan, the average out-of-pocket annual cost for an ACA policy for a family of four earning $90,000 a year would jump by $3,735 – more than $300 a month, which puts health insurance out of reach for many.
Another stat: A 60-year-old couple making $85,000 a year would be facing a $22,600 annual premium hike — about 2 5 % of their total income.
In an Oct. 14 social media post, Democratic U.S. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina spotlighted the health insurance dispute.
“Republicans are the party of kicking Americans off health care,” he wrote. “That was true during Trump’s first term when they tried to kill the ACA, and it’s true now.”
But on the other side of the aisle, Upstate Congressman Ralph Norman, who’s seeking the 2026 GOP nomination for governor, claimed Democrats engineered the shutdown to benefit people who are in the country illegally.
“Democrats shut down the government for illegal aliens then got angry when President Trump made sure our troops got paid,” Norman said in an Oct. 15 post, referring to a Pentagon accounting maneuver that funded paychecks for active duty military members on Oct. 15. “Tells you everything you need to know about their priorities.”
Budget experts say Norman’s charge regarding Democratic priorities is inaccurate – or at best unclear – since illegal immigrants aren’t eligible for ACA subsidies or other federal health care programs such as Medicaid under federal law.
What ACA price hikes would look like in S.C.
Aaron Polkey is the president and CEO of the Palmetto Project, which runs the state’s only nonprofit insurance agency, Insure S.C.
In a Thursday interview, Polkey, who’s currently running for a nonpartisan seat on Charleston City Council, called the planned price spike a “disaster” for South Carolina’s private insurance system.
“Everyone is facing higher premiums, regardless of how they get their insurance,” he said. “Because if substantial numbers of consumers are pushed out of the market [by the subsidy cuts], that’s going to rip through the entire system, raising rates for everybody.”
To illustrate the problem, Polkey pointed to expected price hikes ranging from 11 % to 23 1 % for South Carolinians earning the median income or